Henry More (1614–1687), theologian, and philosopher, is usuallyregarded as characteristic of a group of broadly like-minded thinkers,discerned by historians and designated by them as the CambridgePlatonists (Tulloch 1874, Cassirer 1953, Hedley and Hengstermann2024). Certainly, More’s dualistic theology of body and soul washeavily indebted to Neoplatonic thought, but the philosophicaltheology which he developed through the 1650s and 1660s should berecognised as almost entirely idiosyncratic, even though, in somerespects it was closely paralleled in the philosophy and theology ofhis friend and colleague, Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688), and to alesser extent in the works of his followers, George Rust(c.1628–1670) and Joseph Glanvill (1636–1680).More is notable as a rationalist theologian who tried to use thedetails of the mechanical philosophy, as developed by RenéDescartes, Robert Boyle and others, to establish the existence ofimmaterial substance, or spirit and, therefore, God. In particular heis known for developing a concept of a Spirit of Nature, anintermediary between God and the world which was supposedly requiredto account for those physical phenomena which could not be explainedby the mechanical philosophy, and a concept of an infinite absolutespace which was also made to represent immaterial reality, and even toshare a number of the attributes of God.

• 1. Early Life and Writings
• 2. Cartesianism and Natural Theology
• 3. The Spirit of Nature
• 4. Restoration Cambridge and Latitudinarianism
• 5. Absolutist Ethics and Necessitarian Theology
• 6. More’s Manual of Metaphysics
• 7. Kabbalism and Quakerism
• 8. Necessitarian Theology and New Threats
• 9. Posthumous Reputation
• Bibliography
  • Major Works by More
  • Other Primary Sources
  • Secondary Sources
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Early Life and Writings

Born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, on 12 October 1614, More was theseventh son of Alexander More, sometime alderman and mayor ofGrantham, and his wife, Anne (née Lacy). After initialschooling at Grantham grammar school, he was sent to Eton College in1628. In 1631, his uncle, Gabriel More, who was a fellow atChrist’s College, Cambridge, arranged for Henry to enter hiscollege. This was to be the setting for the rest of More’s life.He took a BA in 1636, the MA in 1639, and was made a fellow of thecollege in 1641. More had already begun to familiarise himself withNeoplatonic philosophy during his undergraduate years, and began todevelop his own dualistic ideas, emphasising the immateriality of thesoul, in philosophical poems approximating to the mode of EdmundSpenser’sFaerie Queen (1590), which he wrote in 1639and 1640. He ventured into print with the first of these, thePsychodia Platonica (“Platonic Song of the Soul”)in 1642 (Crocker 2003).

It seems clear that from very early on More developed ambitions topromote his own understanding of true Christianity. Indeed, if hisautobiographical memoir, written as a preface to hisOperaomnia of 1679, is to be believed, More began to develop his ownideas as a result of a schoolboy rejection of the Calvinist doctrineof predestination, which he saw as a morally indefensible position forGod to uphold, and therefore could not be part of true religion(translated into English in Ward 2000, 15–16; for a laterexample of More’s anti-Calvinism, see More 1668, 71–78;Hedley and Hengstermann 2024, 12–14, and 101–02). Thisrecollection is certainly revealing, not only about More’sbeliefs, but also about his whole approach to religion. Like Calvinhimself, More wanted to establish a system of belief which conformedto what he saw as the dictates of reason. But reasoning from differentstarting points can lead to very different conclusions. Calvin wanteda God who was immutable and so the concept of predestination seemed tofollow as a rational requirement. More, by contrast, wanted a God whowas, above all, morally perfect and unimpeachable. His differentstarting point from that of Calvin led him to a very differentrational theology. More’s was a theology in which God wasobliged by his goodness to conform to absolute standards of morality,and therefore to create a world which was, as Voltaire’s(1694–1778) Dr Pangloss would have said, the best of allpossible worlds (Voltaire [1759] 1966, 2). More’s motive inpromoting this theology was not to solve the so-called “problemof evil” (why God allows so much suffering in the world), as itwas later for Leibniz (and Dr Pangloss), but to ensure that Godcreated a world which was (according to More at least) most capable ofestablishing the Creator’s own existence. More believed that thebest of all possible worlds was one which demonstrated its dependenceupon God and thereby made atheism an untenable position. In hisImmortality of the Soul (1659), for example, More wrote thatGod “ordering the natures of things infallibly according to whatisbest, must of necessity ordain that the Souls of men liveand act after death” (More 1662,Immortality of theSoul, separately paginated, 144). Similarly, inDivineDialogues (1668), he wrote that the design in nature showed thatGod always acted for the best (More 1668, 24). It was the effort todemonstrate that God had indeed created the world this way whichdictated all the various idiosyncrasies of More’s philosophicaltheology.

The earliest aspect of this was the attempt in his philosophical poemsto establish a strict categorical separation between body and theincorporeal soul. ThePsychodia platonica consisted of fourparts, the first two, on the life of the soul (Psychozoia)and on its immortality (Pyschathanasia), presentedMore’s views. The third and fourth parts were refutations ofcontemporary views of the soul which threatened More’s strictdualistic ontology.Antipsychopannychia was concerned toreject the belief of the so-called mortalists that the soul sleeps inthe grave after death, only to be awoken at the same time as theresurrection of the body (clearly, a view which severely diminishedthe relevance of the immaterial soul).Antimonopsychiarejected the notion, usually attributed to the Arabic commentator onAristotle know to the Latin West as Averroes (Ibn-Rushd), that theonly tenable notion of the soul in Aristotle was not a personal soul,but a single general soul of humanity. Originally introduced into theWest by a number of anti-Scholastic Aristotelian naturalists (fromSiger of Brabant in the thirteenth century to Pietro Pomponazzi in thesixteenth) this idea was again becoming current among atheisticcontemporaries of More (Leech 2013, Joseph 2019).

More followed this up with what he called an essay, but which wasstill written in sub-Spenserian stanzas, on “the Infinity ofWorlds out of Platonick Principles”.DemocritusPlatonissans (1646), accordingly, is the part of More’sphilosophical poem cycle which deals with the material side of thedualist dichotomy. He may have been inspired here by theTwoTreatises of Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–1665) which had justappeared (1644), and which he mentions in the notes to his poem. Digbydeveloped a version of atomistic natural philosophy and argued thatall change is nothing more or less than a re-arrangement of thematerial atoms comprising all bodies. Consequently, Digby went on toargue, immaterial souls cannot change, and must therefore be immutableand immortal (Digby 1644, 350; Henry 2022). More used the same generalstratagem with regard to the relationship between body and soul in hispoem, and it was presumably during the writing ofDemocritusPlatonissans that More first became interested in the latestdevelopments in natural philosophy (Thomson 2008, 94). In particular,it was at this time that More began to study the philosophy ofDescartes (1596–1650) (Gabbey 1982). Clearly, More wassufficiently aware of developments in natural philosophy to know thatDigby’s atomistic system was derivative from, and by no means aspowerful as, thePrincipia philosophiae published in the sameyear as Digby’sTwo Treatises by the great Frenchmathematician turned metaphysician and physicist (Webster 1969,Cristofolini 1974, Hall 1996, Crocker 2003).

At around this time, More also began to embrace another Platonic idea,and one which had been introduced into Christian thought in the thirdcentury by Origen (though never accepted as orthodox), namely thepre-existence of the individual soul before its incarnation (Reid2012, Hengstermann 2017). He devoted another poem to his firstexposition of this,The Praeexistency of the Soul, which wasincluded in his collectedPhilosophical Poems of 1647. Thisis a clear example of how More’s pursuit of a rational theologyled him to unusual, if not entirely idiosyncratic, positions. HisPlatonic insistence on the immortality of the soul led him to rejectthe notion that every individual human soul was created at itsconception, in favour of the Origenian position that all intellectualnatures were created equal and alike from the beginning of eternity(Scott 1991). This was also bound up with More’s concern for theperfect goodness of God—More did not want to involve God incolluding with the illicit sexual acts of sinners by intervening intheir acts to create souls for their illegitimate progeny. As Morelater put it in the notes to his edition of George Rust’sOrigenianDiscourse of Truth (1682), God must not be made to“bear a part amongst Pimps and Bawds, and pocky whores andWhoremasters, to rise out of his Seat for them, and by a free Act ofCreation of a Soul, to set his seal of connivance to theirVillanies” (More 1682, 9). Although More adopted thepre-existence of souls, he did not embrace Origen’s belief inuniversal salvation —the idea that all souls would eventually besaved and rewarded with heavenly bliss. Evidently, More took thisdoctrine to undermine God’s justice, and affirmed eternalpunishment for sinners (Hengstermann 2017).

The decision to present and to defend what purported to be arationally-based pneumatology in poetic form is certainly puzzling tothe modern reader, but it was also rather unusual in More’s ownday. Although there were clear ancient precedents, such as the epicpresentation of Epicurean atomism in theDe rerum natura ofLucretius, the poetical presentation of philosophical ideas seemed tobe most common in alchemical, astrological, and other magical works,such as theCompound of Alchymy by George Ripley (c.1471), and theZodiacus vitae of Marcellus Palingenius(c. 1531). It seems that More’s determination topresent his ideas in verse is a manifestation of an undeniabletendency in him towards emotional rapture, particularly where mattersof religion are concerned. Although intellectually committed torationalism in religion, More’s personal religious feelings wereobviously deep-seated and could easily become highly emotional, andeven close to what was decried at the time as a dangerous tendency inreligion, namely “enthusiasm”. This was noted byMore’s earliest biographer, Richard Ward:

He hath indeed confess’d in a certain Place; That he had aNatural touch of Enthusiasme in his Complexion; but such as (he thanksGod) was ever governable enough; and which he had found at lengthperfectly Subduable. So that no Person better understood the Extent ofPhansy, and Nature of Enthusiasme, than he himself did (Ward [1710]2000, 35).

For the most part, More did manage to subdue these potentiallydangerous tendencies, but he often walked a razor’s edge(Crocker 1990, 2003). It seems clear that More was torn between whathe saw as the need for a rational theology on the one hand and a muchmore emotional submission to religious sensibilities. As Ward wroteapprovingly:

such is the Nature of his Noble Principles and Theories, such theFrame of his Conceptions; that they cannot fail (where embraced) ofmore than ordinarily moving, and even enravishing, at times, the Mindof Man; and Carrying it away Captive into All the Highest Joy,Admiration, and Affection, that the Humane Nature is capable of. Theywill either find or make Enthusiasts of this kind… He himself,with the Holy Psalmist, and others of the Divine Writers, shews afrequent Enthusiasme in this way… (Ward 2000, 36).

This aspect of More’s mental life must be borne in mind in anyattempt to assess the coherence of his philosophy, and hissignificance as a philosopher. It was surely the demands ofMore’s religious concerns which account for those places (someof which will be discussed below) where his philosophical acuityseemed to desert him.

More can be seen to be walking along a narrow ledge above a precipiceof religious enthusiasm in his polemic against the alchemist ThomasVaughan (1621–1666). Writing as Alazonomastix Philalethes, Morelaunched an attack against Vaughan’s recently publishedNeoplatonic and alchemically inspired views of man and nature. Thesewere More’s first publications after finishing his cycle ofpoems. More felt obliged to attack Vaughan in print precisely because,to the undiscerning eye, their philosophies might seem to becongruent. As More wrote:

I was afraid that men judging that this affectation of Platonisme inyou, might well proceed from some intemperies of bloud and spirit; andthat, there [being] no body else besides us two dealing with thesekinds of notions, they might yoke me with so disordered a companion asyourself: Reasoning thus with themselves; Vaughan of Jesus in Oxenfordholds the pre-existence of the Soul, and other Platonick Paradoxes,and we see what a pickle he is in: What think you of More ofChrist’s that wrote the Platonicall Poems? (More 1651, 36)

Although More professes to subscribe to a philosophy which issignificantly distinct from that of Vaughan, it is by no means clearthat contemporary readers would have been able to see what thedifferences were. With hindsight, it can be seen that in these twopolemical works More was trying to protect the concept which he hadvery briefly introduced in his poetical works and which was to proveso important in his subsequent philosophy, namely the Spirit of Nature(discussed fully below). What is most obvious here, however, is nothow More conceived of this universal spirit, but that he did not seeit in the same way that Vaughan did in hisAnima magicaabscondita: Or, A Discourse of the universall Spirit of Nature(1650). He objects unequivocally, for example, to the fact thatVaughan seems to imply (on More’s reading, anyway) that auniversal world spirit or soul is divided and parcelled up into allcreatures, to give them life. More objects not only to Vaughan’ssuggestion that the whole world is “an Animal”, but alsoto the idea that the world soul can be “either barrel’d upor bottled up, or tied up in a bag, as a pig in a poke!” (More1650, 51). More’s objection, reflecting his strict dualism, isthat an immaterial soul could not be trapped inside body, sinceimmaterial entities can freely penetrate material bodies. When Moresubsequently develops his own concept of the Spirit of Nature into itsmature form it is to be a continuous and all pervasive immaterial (butextended) substance which is capable of operating within bodies byvirtue of its ubiquity, but is not confined by them. The contemporaryreader, however, could not have gleaned from More’sObservations upon Anthroposophia Theomagica (1650), or hisSecond Lash of Alazonomastix (1651), anything other than hisobjections to Vaughan’s views; there was little or no intimationof More’s own still developing ideas.

Furthermore, even here, while vigorously decrying Vaughan’s“enthusiasm”, More cannot prevent himself from revealinghis own tendencies in the same direction (Crocker 1990, 2003,Guinsberg 1980, Joseph 2023). The real nature of the union betweensoul and body, More at one point unwisely declared, is “moreTheomagicall then our Theomagician himself is aware of” (More1650, 52). It is a sign of the tension between More’srationalism and his need to express his religious devotion that hepersisted in writing enthusiastically even when he was aware of sodoing. His apologetic attempts to defend himself were hardlyconvincing: “Nor am I at all, Philalethes, Enthusiastical. ForGod doth not ride me as a Horse, and guide me I know not whither myself; but converseth with me as a Friend; and speaks to me in such aDialect as I understand…” (More 1651, 178).

It seems that, alongside More’s own enthusiasm, was a tendencyalso towards magical beliefs—we have already noted that hispoetical works are reminiscent of magical works—seen here notonly in his similarities to Vaughan’s magical works, but alsodiscernible later in his concept of the Spirit of Nature (Joseph2023).

2. Cartesianism and Natural Theology

More read Descartes’sPrincipia philosophiae in 1646,and it had a very profound effect upon him and upon the subsequentdevelopment of his own philosophy. “All that have attemptedanything in naturall Philosophy hitherto are mere shrimps and fumblersin comparison of him”, More wrote in 1648 (Letter to Hartlib, 11December 1648, Webster 1969, 365). Accordingly, he began to teachDescartes’s mechanical philosophy to interested students inCambridge, and so became one of the earliest conduits for thedissemination of Cartesianism in Britain. More is credited withinventing the word, Cartesianism, and has been said to be behind thestrangely Platonic reading of Descartes’s methodology in theanonymous preface to the first English translation of theDiscourse of a Method (1649) (Cristofolini 1974). In hislater writings, however, More is much more critical of this newphilosophy. It used to be assumed that More began as a follower ofDescartes and became more critical of his philosophy as his ownphilosophy matured. It is now recognised, however, that More wasalways critical of certain aspects of Cartesianism, and that theincreasingly negative attitude towards Cartesianism reflects a growingrealisation that Descartes’s errors (as More saw them) were notsimply infelicities, which might be corrected by philosophicalnegotiation, but were defining characteristics of Cartesianism,particularly as the philosophy was developed by his followers, afterDescartes’s own untimely death (Gabbey 1982, 1990; Reid 2012,2018; Leech 2013).

There is an interesting contrast here with More’s response toVaughan. More was immediately aware that, although he and Vaughanmight seem to be fellow-travellers, their philosophies—and theirunderlying beliefs—were in fact very different. In the case ofDescartes, however, More seems to have genuinely believed they werefellow-travellers, both committed to the establishment of a dualism ofbody and soul in the service of religion, even though they might seemto onlookers to have been very different. More expressed this in 1662in the Preface to hisCollection of PhilosophicalWritings:

We both setting out from the same Lists, though taking several ways,the one travelling in the lower rode of Democritism, amidst the thickdust of Atoms, and flying particles of Matter, the other tracingo’er the high and aiery hills of Platonism, in that more thinand subtle Region of immateriality, meet together notwithstanding atlast (and certainly not without a Providence) at the same Goal, namelythe Entrance to the holy Bible, dedicating our joint labours to theuse and glory of the Christian Church… (More 1662, PrefaceGeneral, xii)

Right from his first acquaintance with Descartes’s philosophy,therefore, More believed that, like him, Descartes supposed thatexplanations of physical phenomena in terms of material principlescould only take us so far, and beyond that point it was necessary toacknowledge the role of incorporeal active principles. In so far asDescartes did believe this, for him the boundary demarcating whatcould be explained in material terms and what could not, was a longway beyond where More would want to place it.

More’s interest in Descartes’s philosophy was so profoundthat his acquaintance, Samuel Hartlib (c.1600–1662), anassiduous “intelligencer” who keenly promoted (andfacilitated) philosophical correspondence, persuaded More to write toDescartes in December 1648. More wrote four letters in all, but onlyreceived replies to the first two before Descartes’s death in1650. He received an unfinished third reply from Claude Clerselier in1655, while Clerselier was preparing his edition of Descartes’sLettres (1657), which prompted More’sResponsio adfragmentum Cartesii. It is clear from these letters thatMore’s differences with Descartes were (as we might expect)considerable and more serious than More realised.

More had some detailed criticisms of Cartesian physics, including hisaccount of refraction, and his vortex theory of celestial motions(which, More pointed out, ought to have given rise to celestialcylinders, rather than spheres, because the vortexes were held to berotating in a plane around the equators of celestial bodies) (see, forexample, More 1662, inAntidote Against Atheism, separatelypaginated, 39; see also the Preface General, xv), but the morephilosophical criticisms revealed the most significant differencesbetween them. More’s belief in an absolute space and time, whichwas going to play a major role in his subsequent philosophy, wasforeshadowed here in his critique of the Cartesian concepts. Herejected not only Descartes’s distinction between a universewhich is indefinite in extent and one which can be concluded to beinfinite, but also Descartes’s definition of body as extension,and the concomitant impossibility of void space (Koyré 1957,Grobet 2010, Agostini 2017). More began to develop here one of hismost idiosyncratic beliefs, that everything had to exist in space. ForDescartes bodies were extended things, but immaterial entities, suchas God, angels, and souls, were not extended and could not be said tooccupy space (to do so was a category mistake). For More, by contrast,immaterial entities had to exist in space, and had to be extended.What did not exist in space, according to More, did not exist at all(Koyré 1957, Grant 1981, Reid 2012). Another group ofcriticisms derived from More’s dissatisfaction withDescartes’s version of mind-body dualism, including aspects ofthe union and interaction of body and soul, the denial of souls inanimals, and major differences about what can be achieved by matter inmotion, and what for More required a more active principle. Moreagreed with Descartes that matter was inert and therefore could onlybe moved in passive response to an external mover. Where Descartesassumed the only such external movers were other moving bodies(initially, matter had been put into motion by God at the Creation andsubsequently motion was transferred from one body to another inaccordance with the three laws of nature Descartes had devised), Moreinsisted that bodies could be moved by self-active, self-moving,immaterial entities, such as souls and even God himself (Henry 1986,1989; Reid 2012, 2018).

The Cartesian claim that animals were more splendid versions ofartificial automata, “which move without thought” (Letterto More, February 1649; Descartes 1991, 366), for example, was seen byMore as providing hostages to atheists. In the scholastic traditionthe ability to move oneself was seen as evidence of the presence of asoul, and therefore of life. Descartes, pointing out that clocks andother automata are capable of moving themselves, denied thistraditional view and held the soul to be responsible only forthinking; movement was exclusively a feature of bodies. In theCartesian system, consequently, plants and animals were livingcreatures without souls. Evidently, More regarded this position aslikely to lead to the conclusion that humans could also be counted asliving creatures without souls (it is not clear whether there werecontemporary Cartesians who held this, but it certainly became atleast a minority view in the period of the Enlightenment) (Cohen 1936,Henry 1989, Thomson 2008, Muratori 2017, Reid 2018).

Anxious to defend the concept of immaterial souls from all atheistthreats, More insisted that the soul was necessary for life. He wastherefore opposed not only to Descartes, but also to traditionalscholastic views. The motions of plants and animals (plants beingcapable of internal motions associated with nutrition, reproduction,and growth), according to scholastics, proved the existence only ofvegetative and animal souls respectively. Both of these kinds of soulswere regarded as material, however, being composed of subtle fluids ortenuous but nonetheless material spirits in the body. Descartes simplyabsorbed the functions of these material souls into his mechanistictheory of creature-as-automaton. By contrast, More, pursuing hisoverriding concern to deny atheists any footholds, ran counter to bothAristotelians and Cartesians and insisted on the immateriality ofanimal souls (and presumably vegetative souls, though he does not seemto discuss them; but see Hutton 2021). In More’s version ofdualism only immaterial entities are self-active and capable ofinitiating movement in other entities, and so the fact that plants andanimals can move themselves is taken to prove that they must haveimmaterial souls (Henry 1986, 1989; Reid 2012). It should be noted,therefore, that underlying More’s argumentation is a commitmentto the belief that matter is essentially passive (capable only ofinertial motions), and that only immaterial entities are active. Thiscommitment, however, is not based on any original philosophicalarguments developed by More himself. It is simply based on what Moresees as a fundamental premise of Cartesianism, namely, that matter orbody is completely inert and passive. This is why More initiallyseized upon Cartesianism so keenly. If matter is inert then theactivity we see all around us must have another source, which must beimmaterial. Underlying this, of course, was a desire to deny theclaims of contemporary materialist (and therefore atheist)philosophers (Henry 1986, Leech 2013).

More also took issue with Descartes’s account of collidingbodies. In Descartes’s system the amount of motion was alwaysmaintained at a constant level (guaranteed by God) and this was mademanifest in collisions, where motions could be seen to be transferredfrom one body to another. For More, this seemed too materialistic anexplanation, and failed to pay due attention to the role ofimmateriality. The nub of the matter was that, as More saw it, matterin motion was allowed to explain too much by Descartes. The systemcould be (as indeed it was) appropriated by atheists, who would simplydismiss God’s role and turn it into an entirely materialistphilosophy. Early in his career, More accepted the basic principles ofDescartes’s mechanical philosophy, and accepted that“Matter it self, once moved, can move other Matter” (More1662, inImmortality of the Soul, separately paginated, 21).At this time, More’s immaterial principle of activity, theSpirit of Nature (discussed more fully below), was only introduced toexplain phenomena which More believed could not be explainedmechanically, such as gravity (More 1662, inImmortality of theSoul, separately paginated, 11). In More’s mature naturalphilosophy, however, matter was going to be held to be not merelypassive but absolutely inert. That is to say, where once More wouldhave accepted that passive matter might be held to carry on movingafter being given an initial push (indeed it must do so because itcould not stop itself), More later developed the view that matter wascompletely incapable of moving by itself. Consequently, all activityin any system (even what might otherwise look like merely passiveinertial motion) was to be introduced by, or was the result of, theworking of immaterial spirit, because immaterial entities were theonly entities capable of acting. In the Preface to hisDivineDialogues (1668), for example, More insisted “that there isno purely Mechanicall Phaenomenon in the whole Universe” (More1668, sig. A6v). By this time, More did not want anything toblur the distinction between non-active matter and active spirit, andso he could not allow that matter might be set in motion and continueto move of its own accord, or by its own nature; this looked too muchlike matter having activity of its own.

Another striking indication of the development of More’sthinking on this issue can be seen by comparing his early vitalisticconcept of matter to his later insistence that matter is completelyinert. In his early philosophical poems and in his correspondence withDescartes, More evidently felt he could dismiss mechanisticmaterialism by indicating that even supposedly inanimate bodies werealive in some way (Reid 2012, 2018). We can see this, for example, inhis objection to Descartes’s claim that motion could betransferred from one moving body to another:

I feel more disposed to believe that motion is not communicated, butthat from the impulse of one body another body is so to speak rousedinto motion, like the mind to a thought on this or that occasion, andthat body does not take as much motion as it needs for movement, beingreminded of the matter by the other body. And as I said a short whileago, motion bears the same relation to a body as a thought does to themind: neither is received into the subject, in fact, but both arisefrom the subject in which they are found. And everything that iscalled body I hold to be alive in a sottish and drunken way…(More, letter to Descartes, 23 July 1649, Descartes 1966, V: 383).

Evidently, More saw this as sufficient to refute atheisticmaterialism, declaring in the same letter that although a body canneither feel nor think, “it constitutes the last and faintestshadow and image of the divine essence, which I take to be the mostperfect life” (Descartes 1966, V: 383). It soon became apparentto More, however, that the shortcomings of the mechanical philosophymight be avoided simply by supposing that matter was alive andtherefore capable of self-movement. This might be assumed withoutrecourse to God, and would lead to what More called hylozoic atheism(Reid 2018). More quickly dropped all traces of vitalism from hisconcept of body, therefore, and insisted ever afterwards on the strictdichotomy between inactive matter, and active immaterial spirit.Subsequently, when he discerned hylozoism in later thinkers, such asSpinoza and Francis Glisson (about which more later), he opposed themas vigorously as he did mechanistic materialists, such as ThomasHobbes and the Cartesians (Henry 1987, Sytsma 2017, Hengstermann2020). It is important to note, therefore, that there are clear signsof development in More’s works, from vaguely formed startingpoints to more carefully wrought and internally consistent maturepositions (Reid 2003, 2007).

Be that as it may, Descartes’s initial response to More’saccount of what happens in collisions between bodies (end of August1649), which he never managed to send before his death, was that Morewas inventing principles which were surplus to requirements, andtherefore detrimental to philosophy:

I will say here once and for all that nothing diverts us more fromdiscovering the truth than when we declare to be true something ofwhich we are persuaded for no positive reason, but only by our will.That is, when we have fancied or invented something, and thenafterwards our fabrication pleases us, as in your case, with corporealAngels, the shadow of the divine essence, and such like, none of whichought to be adopted by anyone, because this is the very thing thatbars us from the road to truth (quoted from Gabbey 1982, 212).

This was an extremely perceptive comment. More was going to go on todevelop his concept of the Spirit of Nature (alluded to here as“the shadow of the divine essence”, but which More laterreferred to as “the vicarious power of God”) which woulddraw similar criticisms from the leading natural philosophers, RobertBoyle (1627–1691) and Robert Hooke (1635–1703). For themit was merely a fabrication which explained nothing that could not beexplained more simply without it; and “Truth”, as Boylewas later to say (1672), “ought to be pleaded for only byTruth” (Boyle 1999, 184; Henry 1990). Descartes calledMore’s Angels “corporeal” simply because Moredeclared them to be extended entities. More did not seeDescartes’s comment until 1655, by which time it was too late.By then, More was already committed to his Spirit of Nature, which hesaw as an indispensable feature of the world system (enabling him, forexample, to move away from his earlier vitalist materialism, which henow saw as dangerous to religion). It is doubtful, however, that Morewould have been diverted from this course by Descartes’s words,even if he had seen them in time. The Spirit of Nature was not justpleasing to More; he made it an essential feature of his philosophicaltheology (see next section, and Reid 2012, Leech 2013).

One of More’s students at Cambridge, who was clearly impressedby his account of Cartesianism, was John Finch (1626–1682), sonof Heneage Finch (1580–1631), Speaker of the House of Commons.Finch introduced More to his half-sister, Anne, who later becameVicountess Conway and Killultagh (1631–1679). Anne had a passionfor learning and More tutored her in philosophy, and particularly inCartesianism, but their relationship soon developed into one offriendship. Although they remained friends to the last, therelationship of tutor and pupil eventually gave way to one of equals,and Anne developed sufficiently to produce a philosophical theologythat was very much her own, and was effectively a rejection ofMore’s (Nicolson 1992, Conway 1996, Hutton 2004). The CambridgePlatonist did not just benefit from the delights of Anne’scompany, however; the Conway family was to prove a powerful patron andsupporter for More after the Restoration, when his former allegianceto the Protectorate drew potentially dangerous criticism. Indeed,Edward, Lord Conway (c. 1623–1683) even arranged abishopric in Ireland for More, and an appointment as prebend ofWorcester, but More preferred to remain in Cambridge (Crocker2003).

It was during the Protectorate that More produced a remarkable groupof philosophical writings. There is a sense in which the four workswhich he published throughout the 1650s can be seen as a summation ofMore’s philosophical system. This is perhaps evident from thefact that, shortly after the appearance of the last of them,TheImmortality of the Soul of 1659, he re-issued them all togetherin hisCollection of Philosophical Writings (1662). Theessentially pragmatic aim of More’s philosophy was made plain inthe title of the first of these,An Antidote Against Atheism(1653)—the collection as a whole might well have been called anantidote against contemporary threats to religion: atheism, andenthusiasm.

TheAntidote deserves to be better known as one of theearliest contributions to what later became a vigorous tradition inBritish natural philosophy, namely natural theology. Although there isa sense in which natural theology, or the attempt to establish theexistence and attributes of God by studying nature, can be found amongThomas Aquinas’s five proofs of the existence of God, it wasonly in the seventeenth century that this enterprise began to beworked out in detail, usually alongside the promotion of the newatomistic philosophies which seemed to offer the best alternative tothe traditional “hand-maiden” to Christian theology,Aristotelianism. The very first contributions to natural theology,published long before the tradition’s Newtonian heyday, wereWalter Charleton’sDarknes of Atheism dispelled by the Lightof Nature (1652), and More’sAntidote (Leech2013). More even prefigured the much later argument of William Paleythat depended upon finding a watch in an uninhabited place:

if so brief a treatise as that ofArchimedes de Sphaera etCylindro had been found by chance, with the delineations of allthe figures suitable for the design... could you or anyone elseimagine that the delineating and fitting these things together was bychance, and not from a knowing and designing principle, I mean from apower intellectual? (More 1668, 20–21)

TheAntidote begins by borrowing Descartes’sontological proof of the existence of God, but he went on from thereto consider other aspects of the fact that we have an“indelible” idea of God and, as Descartes showed, otherinnate ideas. This led him to consider, for example, the final causeof our idea of God, which in turn led him to consider our innateknowledge of good and evil. The first book is also concerned with thenature of the soul itself, in which More takes pains to persuade hisreader that it is distinct from the substance of the body, and thatthe body is completely incapable not only of thought, without theincorporeal soul, but also of movement. The second book develops theargument from design to oppose atheism, and the third introduces afavourite stratagem of More’s, the rehearsal of well-known orwell-attested stories of witchcraft, snake-charming, raising oftempests by the power of words, and other “spiritual”phenomena as evidence for the existence of an immaterial realm(Coudert 1990, Crocker 2003). Throughout More builds up a picture ofimmaterial spirit as the only substance capable of spontaneousactivity, and insists that inert matter is incapable of explaining allphysical phenomena on its own.

More’s next work, theConjectura Cabbalistica: Or, Aconjectural Essay of interpreting the minde of Moses according to athreefold Cabbala, viz., literal, philosophical, mystical, or divinelymoral, published in the same year as theAntidote, is astrange exercise, supposedly based on the premise that the first threechapters of Genesis contain a summation of all wisdom but hidden undera veil. It can be seen as an attempt not just to link naturalphilosophy with religion (which could result in a merely deisticnatural theology), but to link it withrevealed religion, astaught in Scripture. Written at the request of Anne Conway, it is anexercise in imaginative scholarship, seeking to show, for example,that ancient Pythagoreanism, which gave rise to Platonism, was in factderived from an earlier Mosaical philosophy, and can now be seen,thanks to More, as tantamount to Cartesianism:

The Cartesian Philosophy being in a manner the same with that ofDemocritus; and that of Democritus the same with the Physiologicalpart of Pythagoras his Philosophy; and Pythagoras his Philosophy, thesame with the Sidonian, as also the Sidonian, with the Mosaical; itwill necessarily follow, that the Mosaical Philosophy in thePhysiological part thereof is the same with the Cartesian. And howfitly the Cartesian Philosophy suits with Moses his Text, I have againand again taken notice (More 1712, 114; see also Crocker 2003, 70).

One of the ways in which More tries to establish the link betweenCartesianism and the teachings of Moses is by arguing for a closeparallel between the three types of matter, or three elements,discerned by Descartes, and the three successively rarefied“vehicles” of the soul in Platonised versions of Christiandoctrine, the terrestrial, the aerial, and the aetherial. It isperhaps worth pointing out that this work owes little or nothing tothe Jewish tradition of Kabbalah, but should be seen as a latecontribution to the Renaissance tradition of Christian cabbala firstintroduced by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) (Coudert1992, Crocker 2003; but see below, and Laerke 2017, for developmentslater in More’s career).

Having directly attacked atheism, and shown the close relationshipbetween the Bible and the latest philosophical ideas, More then turnedhis attention to what was widely perceived as the other contemporarythreat to sound religion, enthusiasm. TheEnthusiasmusTriumphatus of 1656 is concerned with the different kinds ofreligious fanaticism, their causes, and how to cure them. Among thespecific writers singled out by More are the founders of the so-calledFamily of Love, David George (fl. 1550?), and Henry Nicholas(c. 1501–c. 1580), the alchemist and“Luther of medicine”, Paracelsus (1493–1541), andthe German mystic, Jacob Boehme (1575–1624). The cure prescribedby Dr More required temperance, humility, and reason (Hutton 1990,157–71; Hedley and Hengstermann 2024, 156–66). Here again,however, we can see More’s overriding concern with a failure todistinguish between matter and spirit:

Our exorbitant Enthusiasts professe that everything is God in love andwrath: Which if I understand anything is no better then Atheisme. Forit implies that God is nothing else but the Universall Matter of theWorld, dressed up in severall shapes and forms, in sundry propertiesand qualities… But to slice God into so many parts is to woundhim and kill him, and to make no God at all (More 1656, 48).

The final book in this series, and for the time being the culminationof More’s philosophical ambitions, was theImmortality ofthe Soul, So farre forth as it is demonstrable from the Knowledge ofNature and the Light of Reason (1659). As is evident from thetitle, the book marks a return to natural theology, but it alsoreturns to other earlier themes, including the parallel betweenCartesian matter theory and the three “vehicles” of thesoul, and the reality of spiritual phenomena as revealed in accountsof witchcraft, apparitions, and the like. A major new focus of concernis the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, whoseLeviathan hadappeared in 1651. More decries Hobbes for his materialism, hisdeterminism, and his mortalism (emphasising the resurrection of thebody on a far distant Day of Judgment, with no interimpostmortem punishment, or reward), all of which, of course, are seenby More as incompatible with Christian theism (Henry 2021, Hedley andHengstermann 2024, 107–12).

Perhaps as a result of the perceived atheism of Hobbes, andMore’s increasing awareness that the philosophy of Descartes hadalso been appropriated by atheists and twisted to serve theirpurposes, More presents his own would-be cure for atheism in its mostcogent and most powerful form inThe Immortality of the Soul.The main focus of the three books are the establishment of dualism andthe nature of incorporeal substance, the relationship of the soul tothe body, and the life of the separated soul in the after-life; butalong the way More deals with many associated phenomena, such as thesouls of animals, and the pre-existence of the human soul. Inparticular, it is in this work that he develops most fully his conceptof the Spirit of Nature. Although the Spirit of Nature is More’smost characteristic contribution to the history of natural philosophy,his pronouncements about it have only very recently been properlyexamined (Henry 1990, Reid 2012, Leech 2013). It is not hard to seewhy this is so. The concept was vigorously opposed by contemporarynatural philosophers, from leading figures such as Boyle and Hooke,down to a dilettante virtuoso such as Sir Matthew Hale(1609–1676). The concept had very little influence, therefore,beyond More’s own circle of devoted followers. The only otherphilosopher to take it seriously was More’s close friend andcolleague, the Master of Christ’s College, Ralph Cudworth(1617–1688). Since our immediate concern here is the philosophyof Henry More, irrespective of its influence, we must look closely athis most distinctive contribution to natural philosophy.

3. The Spirit of Nature

We have already seen that More admired the philosophy of Descartesprecisely because he felt that it showed that matter and motion cannotexplain all phenomena. He reiterated this in theImmortality,recommending that the French philosophy should be taught in all theuniversities of Europe,

That the Students of Philosophy may be thoroughly exercised in thejust extent of the Mechanical Powers of Matter, how farre they willreach, and where they fall short. Which will be the best assistance toReligion that Reason and the Knowledge of Nature can afford (More1662,Immortality of the Soul, separately paginated, 13).

The perceived short-fall would be helpful to religion, according toMore, precisely because the deficit could only be made good byacknowledging the role of an immaterial, active principle. Thisprinciple was the Spirit of Nature.

In theImmortality of the Soul (1659) More accepts thefundamental precepts of the mechanical philosophy, and acknowledgesthe Cartesian claim that “Matter it self once moved can moveother Matter” (More 1662, inImmortality of the Soul,separately paginated, 21), but insists that it cannot move itself. Sofar, Descartes would agree. Unlike Descartes, however, More refuses toaccept that all the phenomena of the universe can follow from anoriginal single initiation by God, setting in train an endless cosmicchain reaction of colliding particles. Even though Descartes talks ofthe continued action of God in preserving the same quantity of motionin the world, as far as More is concerned the Cartesian accountconcedes too much to the mechanical interactions of material entities.Although both More and Descartes agree that God, the primary cause ofall things, operates in the world by means of delegated secondarycauses, they differ radically about the correct secondary causes. ForDescartes, bodies in motion, acting in conformity with his laws ofnature and rules of collision, are the secondary causes; but Morecannot accept that bodies can perform all that is required. Morebelieves that Descartes’s view could undermine his own priorcommitment to his dualistic theology, because it could be made to leadto a monistic materialist system of mechanical philosophy (in whichGod’s role is simply written out). In an attempt to avoid this,More says that the fact that matter can be brought to rest “isan Argument not only that Self activity belongs to a Spirit, but thatthere is such a thing as Spirit in the world”. Presumably thepoint is that if matter was self-active it could not stop its ownactivity, and therefore could never come to rest. Anyone who deniesthis, More insists, “must of necessity (as I have intimatedalready) confess that this Matter moves it self, though it be veryincongruous so to affirm” (More 1662,Immortality of theSoul, separately paginated, 31).

Accordingly, More concludes that there must be an active principle atwork to take care of those things which cannot be accomplished by the“Mechanical Powers of Matter”:

I ask… if there be not in nature an incorporeal substancewhich, while it can impress on any body all the qualities of body, orat least most of them, such as motion, figure, position of parts,etc… would be further able, since it is almost certain thatthis substance removes and stops bodies, to add whatever is involvedin such motion, that is it can unite, divide, scatter, bind, form thesmall parts, order the forms, set in circular motion those which aredisposed for it, or move them in any way whatever, arrest theircircular motion and do such similar things with them as are necessaryto produce… light, colours and the other objects of thesenses… (More, letter to Descartes, 5 March 1649, in More 1662,Epistolae quatuor ad Renatum Des-Cartes, separatelypaginated, 79–80).

But how is it that this incorporeal substance can “actuate grandproportions of matter”? Here More draws on Neoplatonicemanationism. The Spirit of Nature, he says, actuates matter as itemanates outward in a “sphere of life and activity” (More1662,Immortality of the Soul, separately paginated, 27). Itdoes so because it is axiomatic that an “Emanative Cause”is “such a cause as merely by Being, no other activity orcausality interposed, produces an Effect.” An example of anemanative cause is light from a candle. When a candle is lit it emitslight and cannot fail to do so. There must be such a cause in theworld, he says, because “something must move itself” (More1662,Immortality of the Soul, separately paginated, 27).

It should be noted that More’s Spirit of Nature must be extendedin space, if it can be said to emanate spherically. This marksMore’s notion of spirit out from Descartes’srescogitans. For Descartes, matter is extended and souls are not;strictly speaking (although there was some room for manoeuvre, Reid2008), souls are non-spatial entities and do not exist in space. ForMore, this is an idea of existence which makes no sense. For somethingto exist, it must exist somewhere; it must occupy space. The same istrue of God, no less than the Spirit of Nature, and individual souls(Grant 1981, Reid 2003, Leech 2013).

More has a ready answer to those for whom extension impliesdivisibility, and who therefore object that, if More were right, Godand souls would be divisible. More concedes that extended things canbe divided conceptually, but immaterial spirits, such as God andsouls, cannot be physically divided in any way. Moving away from theconcept of divisibility, More introduces the notion of what he calls“discerpibility”, deriving from the Latin word for tearingin pieces. He draws on the long-standing exemplar of Neoplatonicemanation theory to make his point—light. A luminous orb oflight, he says, “does very much resemble the nature of a Spirit,which is diffus’d and extended, and yet indivisible” (More1662,Antidote Against Atheism, separately paginated, 150).No engine or art could separate one luminous ray from another, and

The parts of a Spirit can be no more separated, though they bedilated, than you can cut off the Rayes of the Sun by a pair ofScissors made of pellucid Crystall (More 1662,Antidote AgainstAtheism, separately paginated, 16).

In Ancient emanation theory, of course, the ultimate source from whichall things emanated was God, and it seems clear that More follows suithere as well. The Spirit of Nature is “the first step to theabstrusest mysteries in Natural Theologie”, More writes, becauseit is “the Vicarious Power of God upon the Matter” (More1662,Immortality of the Soul, separately paginated, 13). Butthis seems to open More up to another charge, namely that he hasabandoned any pretence to a natural philosophy, seeking to explainphenomena in terms of secondary causation, and instead simply defersall things to the direct action of God.

But More is adamant that the Spirit of Nature is a “Secondary orEmanatory Substance” (More 1662,Immortality of theSoul, separately paginated, 28), and should correctly be seen asa secondary cause. Responding to the charge that he has“introduced an obscure Principle for ignorance and Sloth to takesanctuary in… and hinder that expected progress that may bemade in the Mechanick Philosophy” (More 1662,Immortality ofthe Soul, separately paginated, 11), More insisted that theSpirit of Nature was a help, not a hindrance. Speaking of thisinstrument of the “Vicarious Power of God”, he wrote:

Nor needs the acknowledgment of this Principle to damp our endeavoursin the search of the Mechanical causes of the Phaenomena of Nature,but rather make us more circumspect to distinguish what is the resultof the more mechanical powers of Matter and Motion, and what of anHigher Principle (More 1662,Immortality of the Soul,separately paginated, 12–13).

One of the ways in which More supported this claim was to repeatedlyinsist that the Spirit of Nature operated blindly, without perceptionor intelligence (and so was not in any sense the manifestation of thedirect action of God). He illustrates this by reference to the newexperiments with an air-pump conducted by Robert Boyle. If theair-pump is fitted with a valve, the air beating against the valvewill not only close the valve against itself, but “will bear upwith it a ten-pound weight” (More 1662,Antidote AgainstAtheism, separately paginated, 44). This kind of“self-thwarting” activity (since the air really“intends” to fill up the vacuum in the chamber of thepump) shows not only that the air has “no Power, Knowledge, andliberty of will”, but also that there are no “Divineparticles interspersed in the Aire that have”. More concludes atthis point,

that the Impetus of Motion in all matter is blinde and necessary, andthat there is no Matter at all that is free and knowing but moves andacts of it self… according to the mere Mechanical laws ofMotion (More 1662,Antidote, separately paginated, 44).

Elsewhere More says,

That no matter whatsoever of its own Nature has any active Principleof Motion, though it be receptive thereof; but that when God createdit, he superadded an impress of Motion upon it, such a measure andproportion to all of it, which remains still much-what the same forquantity in the whole, though the parts of Matter in their variousoccursion of one to another have not always the same proportion ofit… (More 1662,Immortality of the Soul, separatelypaginated, 47–8).

In theImmortality of the soul, then, he seems to imply thatthe Spirit of Nature simply communicates the laws of nature to therelevant systems, since he describes it as “a mute copy of theeternal Word (that is, of that Divine Wisedome that is entirelyeverywhere)” which

is in every part naturally appointed to do all the best services thatMatter is capable of... according to that Platform of which it is theTranscript, I mean according to the comprehension and Purpose of thoseIdea’s [sic] of things which are in the eternalIntellect of God.

Accordingly, the Spirit of Nature “is the lowest SubstantialActivity from the all-wise God, containing in it certain general Modesand Lawes of Nature” (More 1662, Preface General, xvi; see alsoReid 2012, and Joseph 2019.

Here, then, More fully accepts the precepts of the mechanicalphilosophy, but he refuses to accept that Cartesianism can account forall phenomena. As in his letters to Descartes, for example, he pointsout that the mechanical vortex theory should result in cylindricalheavenly bodies, so it must be the action of the Spirit of Nature thatmakes them spherical (see, for example, More 1662, inAntidoteAgainst Atheism, separately paginated, 39; see also the PrefaceGeneral, xv). He also points to magnetism and gravity as phenomenawhich are not convincingly explained by Descartes, as well ascondensation and rarefaction. He also points to the Achilles heel ofthe mechanical philosophy, the generation and development of plantsand animals, as well as the instinctive behaviour of animals (More1662,Immortality of the soul, separately paginated,193–204).

So More argued in theImmortality of 1659. Later on in hiscareer, however, More’s concern to establish the existence ofimmaterial spirit beyond all doubt, in order to combat what he sees asincreasing atheist threats, leads him to deny that bodies are capableeven of mechanical interactions: “there is no Phaenomenon ofNature purely Mechanicall” (More 1668, 31). All phenomena, hesays, are “not carried according to Mechanicall Necessity, butthat there is a Principle that has a Prospection for the best, thatrules all” (More 1686, 34).

In all these later cases the Spirit of Nature is required tointervene, although More is vague upon precisely how it intervenes.More does develop the idea that the Spirit of Nature can “uniteand as it were cohere” (uniatur & quasicohaerescat) with body in order to move it (More 1671, 398;translated in More 1682, 174).

Similarly, in his defence of the concept of the Spirit of Natureagainst the criticisms of Sir Mathew Hale, More declares:

it is manifest that there is a more noble and divine Being in theworld that gave this inferiour immaterial Being its existence andallotted to it in measure, or limited out to it these general Laws ofvital activity, which we discover in it in the Phaenomena of Nature(More 1676, 190).

But More is less concerned about the details of how the Spirit ofNature fulfils its functions, than he is with establishing that itmust exist. As he goes on to say immediately after the lastquotation:

this certainty of the existence of the Spirit of Nature demolisheththe strongest bulwark that ordinarily the Atheist has, namely hisconfidence that there is no such thing as a Spirit or Immaterial Beingin the World. Whence he securely hugs himself in that fond and foulConclusion, That there is no God (More 1676, 190).

Having pointed to phenomena in nature which cannot be explained interms of the mechanical philosophy, More can introduce the concept ofan active Spirit of Nature to fill in the lacunae. He therefore hasprovided, according to his own lights, a rational, philosophical,basis for the necessary existence of the Spirit of Nature, and byextension of spirit, or incorporeal substance more generally. This iscrucial, of course, for More’s dualistic theology. It seemsclear to us, as it must have for many contemporary readers, that theSpirit of Nature did not emerge from More’s understanding of thenatural world, but from the demands of his rational dualist ontology.Preoccupied as he was with the need to establish a categorical dualismbetween inert matter and active incorporeal spirit, he was quick tosee those parts of Descartes’s natural philosophy which wereleast plausible, or completely unconvincing, as providing what he tookto be evidence for the necessary existence of the Spirit ofNature.

4. Restoration Cambridge and Latitudinarianism

The year after the appearance of theImmortalityof theSoul, More published hisExplanation of the Grand Mystery ofGodliness (1660). Although Richard Ward tells us that More vowedto write this book during a “dangerous fit of Sickness, if itshould please God to recover him from it” (Ward 2000, 335),there is every reason to suppose that, after theImmortality,More felt he had said enough about the philosophical background to hisbeliefs, and fully intended to turn to an explication of his faith.Furthermore, the decision to write an exposition of his religiousideas may have been influenced by the political upheaval following thedeath of Oliver Cromwell in 1659, and the restoration of the monarchy.More had taken the Engagement late in 1650 (engaging to be true andfaithful to the Commonwealth of England) (Gabbey 1992, 113–4)and was therefore in a precarious position on the reinstatement of theexiled and ejected Cambridge fellows who had refused theEngagement.

By this time More’s anti-Calvinism and his emphasis uponrational theology ensured that he was branded as a“Latitude-man” by more conservative divines, and with thereturn of the exiles to Cambridge the Latitudinarians came to be seenas potentially subversive in both politics and religion (Crocker2003). If More did write hisGrand Mystery of Godlinesspartially as a response to his precarious situation in Cambridge hedid not engage in dissimulation of his beliefs. Evidently Morebelieved that his position was so reasonable that a clear statement ofhis beliefs would win over his critics and result in his completerehabilitation. More’s chief purpose in the book was to persuadebelievers that there are only a few essential doctrines of the Church,all other details of one’s faith being indifferent toone’s salvation, and that all that was required of a goodChristian was to recognise and adhere to these essentials (which wasthe hallmark of Latitudinarianism).

Unfortunately, but perhaps predictably, More’s stratagem did notwin over all his readers. For one thing, there were too many people atCambridge who had a vested interest in bringing him down (as a leadingLatitudinarian), and for another, More, typically, could not preventhimself from introducing more theological niceties into his discussionthan were compatible with his irenic purposes. In particular, whilediscussing the dual nature of Christ, as both human and divine, Morecould not forebear from bringing in the doctrine of the pre-existenceof souls, and suggesting that Christ’s human soul had been inperpetual union with the Father for all eternity (and was in thisrespect uniquely different from other human souls). More also went onto use his own theory of the three “vehicles” of the soul,aetherial, aerial, and terrestrial (which he had introduced inConjectura Cabbalistica and developed more fully in theImmortality of the Soul), as a way of persuading doubters ofthe reasonableness of accounts of Christ’s resurrection andascension (More 1662,Immortality of the Soul, separatelypaginated, 118–44).

Joseph Beaumont (1616–1699), who had been established as Masterof Jesus College after the Restoration but had just moved to becomeMaster of Peterhouse, privately circulated a manuscript raising tenmajor objections against More’sGrand Mystery ofGodliness in 1663. More was evidently beleaguered by morewidespread opposition in Cambridge at this time, and Edward, LordConway, at the urging of his wife, Anne, arranged a preferment forMore in Ireland. More weathered the storm, however, even after hisApology of Dr Henry More (1664), a response to Beaumont andother critics, elicitedSome Observations on the Apologie of Dr.Henry More (1665) from an unconvinced Beaumont. More’sideas drew further implicit criticism the following year from SamuelParker (1640–1688), later to become Bishop of Oxford (1686), inhisA Free and Impartial Censure of the Platonick Philosophie(1666).

More’s position improved as Latitudinarianism came to be seenmore sympathetically in Restoration England. Where it was once adisparaging term for someone with a “broad swallow”, whowould accept anything, and so was taken to be insincere in everything,it later came to be seen as a genuinely irenic position, and perhapsthe best hope for reconciling all factions. It has to be said,however, that as Latitudinarianism came to be seen in this morepositive light, More was increasingly exposed, ironically, as tooidiosyncratic, too much committed to rather outlandish theologicalpositions, such as his Origenianism, to count as a typicalLatitudinarian, who would insist only on a very few fundamentaldoctrines, all of which were (supposedly) immediately acceptable toall Christians.

One aspect of this can be seen in More’s attempts to offer thecorrect interpretation of the Revelation to St John, which must havereminded some contemporaries of the importance of prophecy andchiliastic claims to many of the radical sectarian groups of theInterregnum period. Perhaps this was another case of More’s owntendency towards religious enthusiasm resurfacing. He pursued hisinterpretation of prophecy in hisSynopsis prophetica of 1664and theExposition of the Seven Epistles to the SevenChurches of 1669 (and revisited these studies towards the end ofhis life with a verse by verse analysis of the Revelation inApocalypsis apocalypseos, 1680, and other apocalyptic works)(Almond 1993, Hutton 1994). In keeping with his dualistic theology,More rejected chiliastic or millenarian expectations of a Day ofJudgement which would see a general resurrection of all the bodies ofpast ages, and argued instead for a more spiritual Second Coming andresurrection. Here again, More drew on his ideas about the aetherialand aerial vehicles of the soul, which he was able to link to theresurrection in heavenly and incorruptible form as conceived by StPaul (1 Corinthians 15, 45–55).

If More’s apocalypticism was taking him away from the moreconciliatory and irenic concerns of the increasing community ofLatitudinarian thinkers in England, he showed no regrets. Indeed, fromnow on More’s theology was to develop along increasinglyidiosyncratic, and dogmatic lines.

5. Absolutist Ethics and Necessitarian Theology

Since the Restoration More had concentrated exclusively on religiouswritings, some of which were demanded by the writings of his critics.In 1667, however, he produced a work on moral philosophy, theEnchiridion ethicum. It is known that More wrote Latin withdifficulty, and it is not clear why he did not publish this inEnglish. It is possible that he hoped to reach a wider, Europeanaudience—certainly this would be the motivation, a few yearslater, for translating his earlier works into a LatinOperaomnia (1675–79)—but this seems an unlikely book withwhich to introduce oneself to a European readership. There is anotherpossible explanation, with much more restricted local concerns: Morepublished it in Latin to leave room for his friend and colleague RalphCudworth to publish his very similar system of ethics in English.

The fact is, as with so many other aspects of their thinking, More andCudworth shared essentially the same moral philosophy. Cudworth hadbeen preparing his own book on ethics for a number of years but in theevent he never published anything in this area. It seems that heabandoned the project when he heard that More was also working on abook on ethics. Cudworth’s system was posthumously publishedunder the title,A Treatise Concerning Eternal and ImmutableMorality (1731), but it is a title that More might also haveused. One of the main aims of More’sManual of Ethicswas to leave the reader in no doubt that there are absolute values ofgood and evil which are co-eternal with God. That is to say, Morewished to refute the Calvinist theological position that whatever Goddecrees to be good is good, in favour of the alternative theologicalposition, that God wills what is good (and he does so necessarilybecause He himself conforms to an absolute standard of goodness).

This marks a new phase in More’s life-long opposition toCalvinism. The theology of Calvinism is known as voluntaristictheology because it emphasises God’s will in the Creation. Godcould, and did, create the world freely by the power of his omnipotentwill. His choices in the Creation could not be held to have beenconstrained by pre-existing notions of good or evil, or bypre-existing essences or natures of things, because there were no suchpre-existing notions before the Creation. The opposing view,represented by More, is known as necessitarian, or intellectualist, oreven rationalist theology, and is most familiar to modern readersthrough the satirical representation of it in Voltaire’sCandide (1759). In this theology, God cannot create a worldarbitrarily, with no constraints upon his creativity. God has toconform to pre-existing, co-eternal, moral and conceptual principles.God must conform to principles of goodness and justice. Similarly, hemust create matter that embodies the principles of materiality,namely, inertness and passivity. Because God is supremely good he mustcreate the best of all possible worlds. The clear implication of thisis that what makes a good world, or a better one, and what makes thebest one possible, can be specified independently of God. Morebelieved the concepts of good and evil were absolute terms, presumablyco-eternal with God, and must necessarily guide, and indeed restrain,God’s creative omnipotence (Henry 1990, Taliaferro 2005, Hedleyand Hengstermann 2024, 295–301).

More’s necessitarian theology is very much to the fore in theDivine Dialogues of 1668. Although this is intended topresent the main features of his philosophical theology to a muchwider audience, it is presented, as the extended title makes plain, inthe context of a discussion about the nature of God’sProvidence. At one point More tells us that “all the Orders ofthe Creation in the whole Universe” issue from God’s“infinite Goodness, Wisdome and Power”, and that Hisgoodness is

So perfect, immutable and permanent, as never… to be carriedotherwise than to what is the best, and his wisdome never at a loss todiscern, nor his power to execute it…

It is repugnant to reason, More insists, that God “should everwill any thing but what is absolutely for the best” (More 1668,II, 24–25). More even discusses in this connection the existenceof animals which do not seem to be beneficial to mankind; arguing thatthey must serve some purpose in the whole system of this best of allpossible worlds (Muratori 2017).

More’s new theological emphasis is also evident in the ratherdifferent attempt to reach a wider audience, this time a learnedLatinate audience across Europe, which he published in 1671(translated into English in 1995), hisEnchiridionmetaphysicum. TheManual of Metaphysics is a majorre-statement of More’s views on incorporeal substance, orspirit. The main claims are familiar from his earlier philosophicalworks, therefore, but there are two new, and highly significant,features. Firstly, More fully develops his ideas on absolute infinitespace and presents it as a major exemplar of incorporeal spirit(Koyré 1957, Grant 1981, Reid 2007, 2012). Secondly, whiledrawing on contemporary experimental natural philosophy to provide himwith examples of phenomena which cannot be explained solely in termsof matter and motion, More explicitly draws upon a specific experimentperformed by Robert Boyle, and published by him in hisNewExperiments Physico-mechanicall touching the Spring of the Air(1660). If Boyle knew of More’sImmortality of the Soul(and it is almost certain that he did), he never troubled to commentpublicly upon it. Once his own experiments, and his own name, weredeliberately invoked to support More’s philosophical theology,however, Boyle could not let it pass (Henry 1990).

6. More’sManual of Metaphysics: Space, Duration, and God

After opening discussions on the nature of metaphysics, ondistinctions, and on the divisions of being, More argues that theproper subject of metaphysics is incorporeal being, or spiritualsubstance. Each of the next twenty chapters (Chapters 6–25)focus on a single “method of proving the existence of immaterialsubstance” (More 1671, 42). These are drawn from naturalphilosophy, rather than from metaphysics: “From gravity”,“From pneumatic experiments”, “From vortices andcomets”, and so forth. The most significant addition toMore’s earlier work appears in Chapter 8 where More uses hisconcept of space as the perfect example of immaterial spirit. Hedismisses Aristotle’s and Descartes’s concepts of placebefore presenting his own views on a real, self-existing space in somedetail. More’s concept will be familiar to modern readers whoare acquainted with Newton’s notion of absolute space. It isessentially a three-dimensional Euclidean space which is infinite inextent, completely isomorphous, and void except where it is occupiedby body. For More, however, it is also the best example ofimmaterial—and therefore spiritual—reality in the world.What makes it the best example for More is that it is completelyundeniable. As one of the characters in More’sDivineDialogues (1668) is made to say, referring to the scholastictradition of calling the supposed infinite space beyond the sphere ofthe fixed stars, “imaginary space”: space is “soimaginary that it cannot be dis-imagined by human understanding”(More 1668, 54).

Previously, More had relied upon the Spirit of Nature as the supremeexample of immaterial substance in the world, but of course, he couldonly insist upon the reality of this Spirit indirectly; arguing thatit must exist to explain gravity, magnetism, generation, and otherphenomena that presented real problems for the mechanical philosophy(Henry 1986, 1990). The advantage of usingspace todemonstrate the main features of immaterial substance was preciselybecause (at least, according to More, disregarding Aristotle,Descartes, and others) nobody could deny that space existed. It couldnot be denied not just because everyone is aware of space by virtue ofeveryday experience, but also because, according to More, it isinconceivable that the world could exist without a space for it tooccupy. “For we must either acknowledge”, More wrote,“that there is a certain extended [entity] besides matter, orthat God could not create finite matter” (More 1671, 42).

More was evidently so excited by his realisation that space couldrepresent immaterial substance that he went on to draw close parallelsbetween absolute space and God. He demonstrated this by enumerating“about twenty titles which the metaphysicians attribute to Godand which fit the immobile extended [entity] or internal place”.It is worth quoting in full:

When we shall have enumerated those names and titles appropriate toit, this infinite immobile, extended [entity] will appear to be notonly something real (as we have just pointed out) but even somethingDivine (which so certainly is found in nature); this will give usfurther assurance that it cannot be nothing since that to which somany and such magnificent attributes pertain cannot be nothing. Ofthis kind are the following, which metaphysicians attributeparticularly to the First Being, such as:One, Simple, Immobile,External, complete, Independent, Existing in itself, Subsisting byitself, Incorruptible, Necessary, Immense, Uncreated, Uncircumscribed,Incomprehensible, Omnipresent, Incorporeal, All-penetrating,All-embracing, Being by its essence, Actual Being, Pure Act.

There are not less than twenty titles by which the Divine Numen iswont to be designated, and which perfectly fit this infinite internalplace (locus) the existence of which in nature we have demonstrated;omitting moreover that the very Divine Numen is called, by theCabbalists, MAKOM, that is, Place (locus) (More 1671, 69–70; seealso Copenhaver 1980, Koyré 1957, Grant 1981, Reid 2012, Leech2013).

More goes through each of the divine attributes in turn to show howthey apply to space. He even contrives to apply the final notion,“Pure Act”, to space: “it is aptly calledbeingin act as it cannot but be conceived as existing outside of itscauses. And, finally, pure Act, since it exists from itselfnecessarily, nor is it affected by any other thing, by which it can becompleted or acted on in some way” (More 1671, 72).

It is difficult to be sure precisely how closely More wants us to takethe analogy between God and space. Clearly space and God are not oneand the same, but More at the very least regards space as aninstrument, or organ, through which God creates and maintains theworld, and without which He could not have created it. It is this lastpoint which is crucial. More insisted that for something to exist, itmust exist in space. This included God himself, and More was the firsttheologian or philosopher to propose that God must be an extendedinfinite being (Grant 1981, 223). Given the intimate connectionbetween God and space and the supposition that nothing could existunless space existed, God did not have to will space into existence.Space was held to be an emanative effect of God. Accordingly, just aslight spontaneously emanates from a lit candle, so space emanates fromGod. The world is necessarily dualistic, therefore. There cannot be amonistic world, comprised solely of matter. Matter requires space toaccommodate its extended nature, but space is immaterial substance,and so the world must be dualist in nature (Grant 1981, 226–27;Reid 2012, 138; Leech 2013; Thomas 2018, 51–2).

More’s concept of space is crucially important, therefore, formaking the truth of his dualistic world picture undeniable, or so hebelieves. To reinforce the truth of his concept of space More alsodismisses what he callsnullibism, the Cartesian view thatsouls can exist nowhere, or not in space. Clearly, this viewcompletely undermines More’s position, and so he dismisses it asnonsensical—for something to exist, More insists, it must existin space (Leech 2013). He also dismisses the view (having previouslyheld it himself, Reid 2003), which he callsholenmerianism,that the immortal soul exists in its entirety in every part of thehuman body. This is the traditional view in Christian theology, whichholds that the soul is in all parts of the body (since all parts arealive), but as the soul is indivisible it cannot be extended throughthe body (otherwise a severed arm might contain part of the soul,separated from the rest of the soul), but must exist everywhere as awhole (and evidently immediately abandons a severed limb). Again, thisis a notion of physical presence which clouds More’s claimsabout the straightforward relationship between existence and space,and so must also be dismissed (Henry 1986; Reid 2003, 2012; Leech2013). Indeed, More’s objection to holenmerianism, as withnullibism, was that it is nonsensical and merely likely to make thecommon reader dismiss it out of hand, and by extension, dismiss theconcept of soul (Henry 1986, 191–92).

In More’s mature philosophy, then, there was a strict dichotomybetween matter and spirit but that dichotomy wasnot defined,as it was in Cartesianism, in terms of extension and non-extension.Because More was committed to the idea that all real entities mustexist in space, spirit, no less than body, was extended. Accordingly,body was defined as “A Substance impenetrable anddiscerpible”, and spirit as “A Substance penetrable andindiscerpible”. Discerpible and indiscerpible, neologisms ofMore’s, mean capable of being physically separated into parts,and incapable of being separated into parts, respectively. PresumablyMore preferred his new terms because, for those readers who knewLatin, it conveyed a notion of tearing a piece off. More perhapswanted to avoid objections to the indivisibility of extended spiritsof the kind levelled against the concept of atoms: if an atom hasdimensions, however small, it isconceptually divisible, evenif atomists wish to claim it is physically indivisible. More concededthat an extended spirit could be conceptually divided, but his pointwas that it is impossible (even in thought) to grab hold of a spiritand tear a piece off it. If you are thinking in those terms, you arenot thinking properly about the nature of spirit. The other majordistinguishing feature of body and spirit, of course, as we have seen,was that bodies were inert and passive, and immaterial spirits werenaturally active, and indeed increasingly responsible, throughoutMore’s career, for any activity in the world (Henry 1986; Reid2003, 2012; Leech 2013).

As well as believing that everything must exist in space, More alsobelieved that everything must exist in time. Furthermore, time, likespace, is a real absolute thing which cannot possibly not exist.Assuming the world to be not much over 5,000 years old (perhapsmistaking the standard view that the world was 6000 years old), Moreinsisted that if God annihilated the world after 1000 years and thenhad recreated it a thousand years ago, there must have been a gap“of above three thousand yeare” (Nicolson 1992, 487). Justas the existence of space cannot be “dis-imagined”, so theexistence of time cannot be dis-imagined. Accordingly, like space,time is conceived of as an attribute of God: God’s existenceentails the existence of space, and the existence of time (Thomas2018, 51). Infinite space and infinite duration are said to be“certain adulterated representations of the divine eternity andimmensity” (adulterinas quasdam esse AeternitatisImmensitatisque Divinae Repraesentationes) (More 1675–79,172; Thomas 2018, 54).

Just as God’s proposed extension had to be protected fromcharges that he must therefore be divisible (by introducing theconcept of indiscerpibility), so his existence in time had to beprotected from charges that his existence must be successive (andtherefore susceptible to change from moment to moment) (Thomas 2018,38). More insisted, accordingly, that God’s existence was notsuccessive, but that his existence somehow transcended time and waspresent to all eternity all at once (Thomas 2018, 34). It has beensuggested, therefore, that with regard to time or duration, Moreaccepted a holenmerian view that God could be entirely “in everymoment yet is not spread out in time” (Thomas 2018, 45).Holenmerianism with regard to space is the view that God is entirelyin the whole of spaceand entirely in every tiny part ofspace; so, it cannot be equated with the view that he is entirely inevery tiny part of time, but isnot in the whole of time. Itis by no means clear, therefore, that “whilst More rejectedholenmerism for divine spatial presence, he maintained it for divinetemporal presence” (Thomas 2018, 45). We should bear inmind that holenmerianism was a neologism coined by More and he appliedit only to claims about spatial occupation. To say that God iseverywhere in his entirety and in every part of space (be it never sosmall) in his entirety is clearly an absurd claim, a “madJingle”, as More said (1662,Immortality of the Soul,separately paginated, 43). But to say that all moments of time, past,present, and future, are simultaneously present to an eternal God,while certainly puzzling, does not seem so obviously contradictory.The historical fact is, More’s view of God’s relationshipto time was fairly standard among contemporary theologians, and shouldnot be compared with his highly radical and unheard of view ofGod’s relationship to space (Grant 1981, 223).

Returning to theEnchiridion metaphysicum, as in theAntidote Against Atheism, and theImmortality of theSoul, More also draws upon various physical phenomena which hebelieves cannot be explained in terms of the mechanical philosophy,and can only be understood if some other factor is at work, namely theSpirit of Nature. More included an example drawn from the series ofexperiments Boyle had conducted using the newly invented air-pump, andwhich he had published in 1660. It is essentially the experimentdescribed in theImmortality of the Soul, in which the pistonof the pump lifts a heavy weight (this time 100 pounds, rather thanten), against gravity. The crucial difference is that here it isexplicitly described as Boyle did it, and explicitly named asBoyle’s experiment.

Although More clearly believed he was engaged in establishing the truereligion, and the true philosophy to support it, not everyone agreed.As soon as the Somerset virtuoso, John Beale (1608–1683), sawit, he wrote to Henry Oldenburg, Secretary of the Royal Society, instrident tones:

Did not I tell yu, wt was to be expected from Dr H. M. His confidenceis as strong as Enthusiasme; & yet yu see what he does. As if hehad a minde to drawe a suspicion, or (at least) to rayse the style ofInfamy agst ye R[oyal] S[ociety] & candid Experiment, as to be soMagicall as to call in ye ayde of Spirits & Angels. If Honble MrBoyles health will bear it, He owes him a chastisement…(Letter, 24 June 1671, Oldenburg [1671–1672] 1971, 120).

The chastisement came in Boyle’sHydrostaticalDiscourse of 1672. Furthermore, it is evident from Boyle’scomments that he objected not only to More’s bad physics, butalso to what he saw as potentially divisive theology. After all, Boylepointed out, even “Heathen Philosophers” were convinced bytheir studies of nature of the existence of God, and they had no needto suppose an intermediary Spirit of Nature: “taking no noticeof an immaterialprincipium hylarchicum, they believed thingsto be managed in a mere physical way according to the General Laws,settled [by God] among things Corporeal, acting upon oneanother” (Boyle 1999, 184). Boyle believed in incorporealsubstance but objected to the attempt to prove its existence byrelying on a “precarious Principle” such as the Spirit ofNature (Boyle 1999, 184).

Boyle was not alone in his criticisms. Sir Mathew Hale took time offfrom his legal studies to publish two critiques, which More tried toanswer in hisRemarks upon two late ingenious Discourses(1676). Somehow Lady Conway heard that “Mr Boyle sayes you hadbetter never have printed it, for you are mistaken in all yourexperiments” (Nicolson 1992, 420). The German physicist, JohannChristoph Sturm (1635–1703) dismissed More’sinterpretation of Boyle’s experiments in 1676 inEpistola adVirum Celeberrimum Henricum Morum de Spiritu ipsius Hylarchio.Robert Hooke took the opportunity to reject More’s views in hisLampas: or, Descriptions of some Mechanical Improvements of Lamps& Waterpoises of 1677.

It is known that Boyle was intermittently writing a study throughoutthese years of the various different concepts of Nature at use indifferent discourses. When this finally appeared in print in 1686 astheFree Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature,More’s ideas were included as a target for Boyle’scritical barbs. But Boyle did not just attack More’s views onthe Spirit of Nature, he also took the opportunity to dismissMore’s necessitarian theology, in favour of his own voluntaristtheology:

God is a free agent, and created the world, not out of necessity, butvoluntarily, having framed it, as he pleased and thought fit, at thebeginning of things, when there was no substance but Himself, andconsequently no creature, to which he could be obliged, or by which hecould be limited (Boyle 2000, 566).

Boyle was not the clearest writer and often garbled his arguments butthe implication here (seen more clearly in the claim that he createdthe world as he pleased than in the claim that he was not obliged toany creature) is that God did not have to create a world in accordancewith pre-established values of goodness (Henry 1990). Certainly, hehad already denied the claim that God had been obliged to create thebest of all possible worlds:

I think it very unsafe to deny that God, who is almighty andomniscient, and an owner of perfections which, for ought we know, areparticipable in more different manners and degrees than we cancomprehend, could not display… them, by creating a work moreexcellent than this world. And, his immense power and unexhaustedwisdom considered, it will not follow either, that because this worldof ours is an admirable piece of workmanship, the divine architectcould not have bettered it… (Boyle 2000, 495)

7. Kabbalism and Quakerism

In October 1670 More was visited at Cambridge by Francis Mercury vanHelmont (1614–1698), son of the famous iatrochemist, JanBaptista van Helmont (1579–1644), and a student of JewishKabbalah. More asked van Helmont if he would visit Anne, Lady Conway,with a view to trying to treat the incessant debilitating headachewhich had troubled her for many years. As a result of meeting Anne,van Helmont became her resident physician, living at Ragley Hall inWarwickshire, where More himself was a frequent visitor. Van Helmontwas a friend and collaborator of the leading Christian cabbalist ofthe day, Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (1631–1689), and More nowhad the opportunity to learn about the Jewish Kabbalah. It should benoted that although his own version of the cabbala, as published inhisConjectura Cabbalistica (1653), was nothing more than amethod of scriptural interpretation of his own invention, Morenevertheless felt that the original Jewish Kabbalah, derivingultimately from Moses, was the true source of the philosophicaltheology which More had managed to “reconstruct”.

It came as quite a shock to More, therefore, to learn through vanHelmont and through correspondence with von Rosenroth that theKabbalah, as developed especially by the leading sixteenth-centuryKabbalist, Isaac Luria (1534–1572), was a long way from what hehad imagined. Its “invincible obscurity” was distastefulto More’s rationalist sensibilities, and he also discernedmonistic materialism in it, and even identification of God withnature. More’s critical writings on Lurianic Kabbalah wereincluded by von Rosenroth in hisKabbala denudata of 1677,and included by More in hisOpera omnia in 1679 (Coudert1992, Crocker 2003, Laerke 2017).

Unfortunately for More, his failure to be convinced by the spiritualworth of mystical Kabbalah contributed to an increasing distancebetween him and his great friend Anne Conway. Van Helmont had becomeinterested in Quakerism and introduced Anne to a number of leadingQuakers, including George Fox (1624–1691), Robert Barclay(fl. 1670), George Keith (1638?–1716), and William Penn(1644–1718). Evidently the Quakers favoured the Kabbalah andAnne increasingly favoured the Quakers. During this time Anne waswriting her own philosophical system which was published posthumouslyasThe Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy(1690 in Latin, 1692 in English). It is essentially a monistic systemin which all things are made of spirit, and she criticises during thecourse of it not only the materialism of Hobbes and Spinoza, but alsothe dualism of Descartes, and her erstwhile mentor, More (Conway 1996,Hutton 2004). It seems clear that Anne was growing intellectually, andspiritually, away from More, and seems to have regarded her new Quakerfriends, a number of whom evidently now colonised Ragley Hall, ascloser to her own developing beliefs. A letter from Lord Conway of1677 even says that the Quakers in the Hall “have free access tomy wife, but I believe Dr. More, though he was in the house all thelast summer, did not see her above twice or thrice” (Nicolson1992, 439–40). More himself during this period seems to havebeen torn between trying to dissuade her from joining the Quakers, andrespect for Anne’s carefully thought-out decision to embracetheir teachings. Indeed, More even showed a grudging respect for theQuakers themselves, who were obviously serious and sincere, and insome respects their enthusiasms matched his own tendencies in thatdirection.

It is perhaps worth noting also that John Finch, More’s formerstudent and Anne’s half-brother, also moved away fromMore’s way of thinking at this time. During his time in Turkeyas a diplomat (1674–1681), Finch wrote a large manuscriptTreatise of natural philosophy which remains unpublished.Finch’s philosophy is materialist and based on an empiricistepistemology, and is highly critical of many of More’s views.Rejecting More’s dualism, Finch takes an almost Hobbesian line,but couples it with fideism in religion: we cannot prove the existenceof God or immaterial substances by the use of reason and so must trustin the Gospels (Crocker 2003).

If nothing else, the fact that two such close admirers of More as JohnFinch and Anne Conway both came to reject his philosophy shows notonly that his philosophy was not as cogent and compelling as hethought, but also that his attempt to use philosophy in the service ofreligion was increasingly seen (as it was by Joseph Beaumont, SamuelParker, John Beale, Robert Boyle, and others) as not onlyunconvincing, but even subversive of sound religion. Indeed it hasrecently been suggested (Leech 2013) that More’s determinedefforts to provide a supposedly unassailable philosophical theologyunintentionally contributed to disaffection with religion, and therise of secularism and even atheism. If More’s vigorouslyproposed philosophical theology, with its claims about souls, spirits,space, and so forth, could be equally vigorously denied by his fellowreligionists, the contemporary onlooker could hardly be blamed fordeveloping a sceptical response to religion in general. The inabilityof religious believers to agree among themselves as to what is the“true” religion has been seen as a major factor in therise of secularism, and has been dubbed “theologicalfratricide”. Ironically, it was the passion and persistence withwhich More promoted his own version of philosophical theology whichled to him being a prominent (though unwitting) participant in that“fratricide” (Leech 2013, 8, 233).

8. Necessitarian Theology and New Threats

More knew, from the time he wrote hisAntidote AgainstAtheism, that Descartes’s philosophy was being appropriatedby atheists for their own purposes. It must have been with some dismaythat he realised this was a rising tide which his own writings didnothing to quell. And then, as if Cartesian atheism and Hobbesianismwere not enough, he heard in the 1670s of new threats to soundreligion. One of these was Spinozism, which appalled More as much asit did every other devout believer. The other atheistic threat, dubbedhylozoism by More, was represented by the much less well known Englishmedical writer, Francis Glisson (1597–1677), formerly Regiusprofessor of Physick (i.e. medicine) at Cambridge.

More wrote two short attacks on Spinoza, one against theTractatustheologico-politicus (1670), which More read in 1677, and oneagainst the “two pillars” of Spinoza’s atheism, thenecessary existence of substance and that there is only one substance(Jacob 1991). More, like others among his contemporaries, saw Spinozaas taking Cartesianism to a predictably atheistic extreme. Misled byDescartes’s identification of extension with matter, Spinozaconcluded that there was only one substance, matter. More was writingbefore the term pantheism became current and so he saw Spinoza’sidentification of this one substance with God simply as atheism.Spinoza confused the divine nature with the nature of created things,according to More, and this was tantamount to atheism (Jacob 1991,Hengstermann 2020, Hedley and Hengstermann 2024). In his confutationof Spinoza More adopted Descartes’s ontological argument for theexistence of God, based on God’s absolute perfection, to insistthat matter cannot be anEns summe et absolute perfectum, andso cannot be identified with God. Ironically, however, More’snear identification of God with space, and his insistence on thespatial extension of God, which many contemporaries saw as amaterialist position (Henry 1986), led a number of Enlightenmentphilosophers, most notably Cristian Wolff (1679–1754), to seehim as sharing in a number of the same errors as Spinoza (Leech2013).

More seems to have written both of his anti-Spinozistic tractshurriedly, as he was preparing the Latin translations of his works forinclusion in the second and third volumes of hisOpera omniain 1679 (volume 1 had already appeared in 1675). Indeed, he told AnneConway that he “could not forbeare” from confuting Spinozawhile he was still in the process of reading him. Both of thesecritiques of Spinoza, were included at the end of volume two and thereis little evidence that they made any impression on contemporaryreaders (Hutton 1984, Henry 1987). In the attack on Spinoza’sTractatus, however, More included an attempted refutation ofthe claims of Francis Glisson (which More likened to Spinoza’sviews) that all matter, whether animate or inanimate, is capable ofperception, is appetitive, and therefore in some sense alive. This didattract critical attention.

Glisson had arrived at his position as a result of physiologicalresearch on the stomach and intestines, in which he noticed that theseand other parts of the body were sensitive to touch even though therewere no nerves present. This is the physiological phenomenon now knownas irritability, but in his efforts to explain it Glisson haddeveloped a general theory of matter and body and had published it inhisTreatise on the Energetic Nature of Substance(Tractatus de natura substantiae energetica, seu, de vitanaturae, 1672).

More’s attack on Glisson drew a response from the leadingPresbyterian divine, Richard Baxter (1615–1691) (Henry 1987,Sytsma 2017, Hengstermann 2020). Glisson had been Baxter’sphysician, so presumably Baxter knew him not to be an atheist, butBaxter was not motivated to defend Glisson merely by friendship. As aCalvinist, Baxter subscribed to a voluntarist theology and wasappalled by the implications of More’s necessitarian theology.More’s rejection of Glisson’s theory depended upon hisclaim that matter had to be necessarily inert and that only spiritcould be self-active—according to More, not even God couldchange this, because it was inherent in the very nature of matter thatit must be inert, and definitive of spirit that it must be active. ForBaxter this was an intolerable circumscription of God’somnipotence on the mere whim of an all too fallible thinker. In aletter to More written in 1681, Baxter said,

I confess I am too dull to be sure that God cannot endue matter itselfwith the formal virtue of Perception… That Almighty God cannotmake perceptive living matter… I cannot prove, or I think you:Where is the contradiction that makes it impossible? (Baxter 1682,28–9)

As Baxter made clear, he was unimpressed by More’s claim thatGlisson’s view might lead to a denial of the existence of Godand the immortality of the soul. For Baxter, More’s claim that“God cannot do this” was just as likely to lead to atheism(Baxter 1682, 29).

More published Baxter’s letter and his reply to it,AnAnswer to a Letter of a Learned Psychopyrist, in his edition ofJoseph Glanvill’sSaducismus Triumphatus of 1682.Glanvill, one of More’s most devoted followers, had died beforehe could produce his response to the anti-witchcraft treatise of JohnWebster (1611–1682),The Displaying of SupposedWitchcraft (1677), which had attacked Glanvill’s earlierbooks on the reality of witchcraft (Crocker 2003). ButGlanvill’s books on witchcraft were largely intended ascontributions to More’s own long standing campaign for provingthe existence of a spiritual realm by anecdotal evidence, and so Moresaw the work through the press. He took the opportunity, however, toadd his own most recent attempts to impress his theories on thereading public, including his response to Baxter, an Englishtranslation of two chapters from theEnchiridion metaphysicum(chapters 27 and 28) which defined the nature of spirit, and yet morestories of witchcraft and apparitions which More himself hadcollected.

More published another work of Glanvill’s at this time, hisLux orientalis, a survey of early views on the pre-existenceof souls, again intended by Glanvill as a contribution to More’sown religious campaign. This was published together with GeorgeRust’sDiscourse of Truth in a work which Moreentitled,Two Choice and Useful Treatises (1682). Rust hadbeen a student of More’s in the 1650s and had remained a devotedfollower while developing his own Origenian theology. More’sannotations to Rust’sDiscourse included a lengthyreply to Baxter’s response toAn Answer to a… LearnedPsychopyrist (Henry 1987, Hengstermann 2017).

The short pieces in these two collections represent More’s finalcontributions to philosophical theology. Otherwise his final yearswere devoted to works on the interpretation of the prophetic books ofthe Bible.

9. Posthumous Reputation and Legacy

It seems fair to say that although More had a small number oflike-minded and devoted followers during his own lifetime, hisphilosophical theology was for the most part regarded with suspicionby his contemporaries. Even some of those who had been tutored by him,and who admired him personally, most notably John Finch and AnneConway, could not go along with his claims about the necessity of adualistic ontology. For those who failed to share More’snecessitarian theology, such as Boyle and Baxter, More’s viewswere dangerous to religion. There were others, however, who believedthat More’s dichotomy between passive matter and active spiritwas invaluable for combatting atheism. It was More’santi-atheistic stratagem which lay behind the rejection of JohnLocke’s speculation about the possibility of thinking matter bythe Bishop of Worcester, Edward Stillingfleet (1635–1699). Ifmatter could think, then the dichotomy between passive matter andactive spirit did not hold, and it would be impossible (the Bishopthought) to use the presence of activity in the world to establish theexistence of a necessarily spiritual realm. Locke, like Baxter, merelyobjected that Stillingfleet’s insistence that not even God couldmake matter capable of thinking, undermined God’s omnipotence,and thereby was likely to undermine the faith (Henry 2011). SamuelClarke took More’s distinction between inert matter and activespirit even further, insisting that not even God could endow bodieswith active powers, and developing what has been called “partialoccasionalism” (Sangiacomo 2018). Effectively, therefore, wherenatural phenomena were concerned, Clarke replaced More’s Spiritof Nature, “the vicarious Power of God”, with the directaction of God himself, or his angels (Henry 2020; see also Thomas2018, and Henry 2022).

It was only really after his death that More’s reputation beganto rise, at least in Britain. There was renewed interest in hiswritings in the early eighteenth century, when More’scombination of rationalism with a passionate, almost enthusiastic,faith must have proved heartening to churchmen living in an age ofdeism. The natural theology which flourished in the age after IsaacNewton led to an increased emphasis on rationalism in religion but itwas important for the clergy to avoid descending into deism, and tocombine their natural theologies with a belief in Scripture, and withwhat More would have called the “Grand Mysteries” ofreligion. His reputation was also helped by the fact that he was seenas a prominent member of the early Latitudinarians, and as thisrational and liberal approach to belief became dominant, More could beseen as one of the movement’s heroes. Furthermore, while Morehad been trying to promote necessitarian theology at a time whenvoluntarist theology was very much in the ascendant (especially inCalvinist countries), the eighteenth century saw a reversal, andnecessitarian theology came to the fore, as represented seriously inAlexander Pope’sEssay on Man, and satirically inVoltaire’sCandide. As the eighteenth centuryprogressed More’s reputation as a theologian, if not as aphilosopher, became assured and it has remained high ever since(Taliaferro 2005, Hedley and Hengstermann 2024, 321–35).

Ironically, there is some evidence to suggest that More was asignificant influence on the later philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. It wasnoted earlier that More was the first theologian or philosopher topropose that God must be an extended infinite being (Grant 1981, 223).Given that the state of being extended was usually equated with beingcorporeal, it was an easy matter for Hobbes to adapt More’stheism to represent the kind of corporeal God that was always implicitin Hobbes’s monistic materialism. Where Hobbes had earlierinsisted that the nature of God was unknowable and ineffable, after1668 he was willing to describe a God which showed marked similaritiesto More’s Spirit of Nature, except, of course, that it wasmaterial (albeit highly rare and attenuated) and intelligent (Henry1986, 2021).

More has been seen also as a significant influence upon Isaac Newton,particularly his ideas on absolute space, and this, together withMore’s role in introducing Cartesianism into England, hasassured his continual inclusion in histories of science of the period.Newton certainly knew More personally in Cambridge, and owned and reada significant number of More’s books. A manuscript copy of thecorrespondence between More and Descartes, compiled beforeClerselier’s edition of Descartes’s correspondence (1657),has recently been found among Newton’s personal papers (Hutton2020). They also shared a profound interest in the interpretation ofthe prophetic scriptures (Hutton 1994, Henry 1993). It seemsundeniable that Newton read and was influenced by More’s viewson space and time, as presented in theEnchiridionmetaphysicum (Koyré 1957, Grant 1981, Hall 1990). LikeMore, Newton also believed that for something to exist it must existin space, and he identified the immensity of infinite space with theextension of God (Grant 1981). He also, like More, regarded space as“an emanative effect” of God—that is to say, heagreed with More that God did not have to deliberately create space,but that God’s existence entailed the existence of space (Newton[1671] 1962). Similarly, in the “General Scholium”, whichhe added to the second edition of hisPrincipia mathematica(1713), Newton wrote that God “by existing always and everywherehe constitutes duration and space, eternity, and infinity”(Newton 1999, 941; Hall 1990, Henry 1993). It seems certain thatNewton took some salient ideas from More, but he was by no means acomplete disciple. It is highly unlikely that Newton would haveadmired More’s natural philosophy, and certainly, like Boyle,Hooke, and other natural philosophers, he rejected More’s Spiritof Nature. Nor did they share similar religious views. Newtondisagreed with More’s interpretation of the Book of Daniel andthe Revelation, and Newton was very much a voluntarist in his theologyand so would have been opposed to More’s necessitarianism (Henry1990, 2020). Even so, the similarities between their views of spaceand time, and their relationship to God, guarantees More’s placein the history of science. Moreover, More’s position in thehistory of philosophy, and in the history of relations between scienceand religion, is secure.

Bibliography

Major Works by More

• Psychodia Platonica; or, a Platonicall Song of the Soul,consisting of foure severall poems (Cambridge, 1642).
• Democritus Platonissans; or, an Essay upon the Infinity ofWorlds out of Platonick Principles (Cambridge, 1646).
• Philosophicall Poems (Cambridge, 1647).
• [Alazonomastix Philalethes],Observations upon AnthroposophiaTheomagica and Anima Magica Abscondita [by Eugenius Philalethes,i.e. Thomas Vaughan] (London, 1650).
• [Alazonomastix Philalethes],The Second Lash of Alazonomastix:Conteining a Solid and Serious Reply to a very uncivill Answer tocertain Observations upon Anthroposophia Theomagica…(London, 1651).
• An Antidote Against Atheism, Or an Appeal to the NaturalFaculties of the Mind of Man, whether there be not a God (London,1653). Enlaged second edition, with an appendix (London, 1655).
• Conjectura Cabbalistica: Or, A conjectural Essay ofinterpreting the minde of Moses according to a threefold Cabbala,viz., literal, philosophical, mystical, or divinely moral(London, 1653).
• Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, Or, A Discourse of the Nature,Causes, Kinds, and Cure, of Enthusiasme… (London,1656).
• The Immortality of the Soul, So farre forth as it isdemonstrable from the Knowledge of Nature and the Light of Reason(London, 1659).
• An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness…(London, 1660).
• A Collection of Severall Philosophical Writings of Dr HenryMore… (London, 1662).
• A Modest Inquiry into the Mystery of Iniquity, The First Part,Containing a Careful and Impartial Delineation of the True Idea ofAntichristianism… (London, 1664).
• Synopsis Prophetica; or, The Second Part of the Enquiry intothe Mystery of Iniquity: Containing a Compendious Prospect into ThoseProphecies of the Holy Scripture, wherein The Reign ofAntichrist… is prefigured or foretold (London, 1664).
• The Apology of Dr Henry More… wherein is contained AsWell a more General Account of the Manner and Scope of his Writings,As A Particular Explication of several Passages in his Grand Mysteryof Godliness (London, 1664).
• Enchiridion Ethicum, praecipua moralis philosophiae rudimentacomplectens… (London, 1667).
• Divine Dialogues, Containing sundry Disquisitions andInstructions Concerning the Attributes and Providence of God in theWorld… 2 vols (London, 1668).
• An Exposition of the Seven Epistles to the SevenChurches… (London, 1669).
• Philosophiae Teutonicae Censura… (London, 1670).
• Enchiridion Metaphysicum; sive, de rebus incorporeia succincta& luculenta dissertatio… (London, 1671). Translatedas:Henry More’s Manual of Metaphysics… with anIntroduction and Notes by A. Jacob, 2 vols, Hildesheim: Georg Olms,1995.
• Opera omnia…, 3 vols (London, 1675–79).
• Remarks upon two late ingenious Discourses: the one, an Essaytouching the Gravitation and non-Gravitation of Fluid Bodies; theother, touching the Torricellian Experiment by Sir Matthew Hale, sofar as they may concern any passages in his EnchiridionMetaphysicum (London, 1676).
• Apocalypsis apocalypseos; or, the Revelation of St John theDivine unveiled… (London, 1680).
• Saducismus Triumphatus: or, Full and Plain Evidence concerningWitches and Apparitions. In Two Parts. The First reating theirPossibility; The Second of their Real Existence (London, 1681,expanded 1682).
• Two Choice and Useful Treatises: the one Lux Orientalis; Or AnEnquiry into the Opinions of the Eastern Sages Concerning thePraeexistence of Souls… [by Joseph Glanvill]TheOther, A Discourse of Truth, By the late Reverend Dr.Rust…with Annotations on them both (London,1682). More’s annotations are separatelypaginated—reference in article is to his annotations.
• A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings… theFourth Edition, corrected and much enlarged, London, 1712.

Other Primary Sources

• Baxter, Richard, 1682,Of the immortality of mans soule, andthe nature of it and other spirits. Two discourses: one in a letter toan unknown doubter; the other in reply to Dr Henry More’sanimadversions on a private letter to him… London.
• Boyle, Robert, 1999, “An Hydrostatical discourseoccasion’d by some objections of Dr H. More in hisEnchiridion Metaphysicum” [1672], in Boyle, R., 1999,The Works of Robert Boyle, edited by M. Hunter and E. B.Davis, volume 7, London: Pickering and Chatto.
• Boyle, Robert, 2000,Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly ReceivedNotion of Nature [1686], in Boyle, R., 2000,The Works ofRobert Boyle, edited by M. Hunter and E. B. Davis, volume 10,London: Pickering and Chatto.
• Charleton, Walter, 1652,Darknes of Atheism dispelled by theLight of Nature, London.
• Conway, Anne, 1996,The Principles of the Most Ancient andModern Philosophy, edited by Allison P. Coudert and Taylor Corse,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Descartes, René, 1649,Discourse of a Method, for thewell-guiding of reason, and the discovery of truth in thesciences…, London.
• –––, 1966,Oeuvres, C. Adam and P.Tannery (eds.), Paris: Vrin.
• –––, 1991,The Philosophical Writings ofDescartes, Volume 3, The Correspondence, edited and translated byJ. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, D. Murdoch and A. Kenny, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
• Digby, Kenelm, 1644,Two Treatises: in the one of which, thenature of bodies, in the other, the nature of man’s soule, islooked into …, Paris.
• Hale, Mathew, 1676,Remarks upon Two Late IngeniousDiscourses: The One an Essay Touching the gravitation andnon-Gravitation of Fluid Bodies, the Other, Observations touching theTorricellian Experiment, so far forth as they may Concern Any Passagesin His Enchiridion Metaphysicum, London: Walter Kettilby.
• Newton, Isaac, [1671] 1962, “De gravitatione et aequipondiofluidorum”, inUnpublished Papers of Isaac Newton,edited by A. R. Hall and M. B. Hall, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 90–156.
• –––, [1687, 1713] 1999,The Principia:Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, translated by I.B. Cohen and Anne Whitman, Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress.
• Nicolson, M. H. (ed.), 1992,The Conway Letters: TheCorrespondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More, and theirFriends, 1642–1684 [1930], reissued with additionalmaterial and an introduction by Sarah Hutton, Oxford: ClarendonPress.
• Oldenburg, Henry, [1671–1672] 1971,Correspondence(Volume 8), edited by A. R Hall and M. B. Hall, Madison: University ofWisconsin Press.
• Parker, Samuel,A Free and Impartial Censure of the PlatonickPhilosophie, Oxford, 1666.
• Voltaire, [1759] 2005,Candide, or Optimism, translatedby Burton Raffel, New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Vaughan, Thomas, 1984,The works of Thomas Vaughan,edited by Alan Rudrum, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Ward, Richard, 2000,The Life of Henry More (Parts 1 and2), edited by Sarah Hutton, Cecil Courney, Michelle Courtney, RobertCrocker and A. Rupert Hall, Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Secondary Sources

• Agostini, I., 2017, “Descartes and More on the Infinity ofthe World”,British Journal for the History ofPhilosophy, 25: 878–96.
• Almond, P. C., 1993, “Henry More and the Apocalypse”,Journal of the History of Ideas, 54: 189–200.
• Cassirer, E., 1953,The Platonic Renaissance in England,translated by J. P. Pettigrove, Edinburgh: Nelson.
• Cohen, L. D., 1936, “Descartes and Henry More on theBeast-Machine – A Translation of their Correspondence pertainingto Animal Automatism”,Annals of Science, 1:48–61.
• Copenhaver, B. P., 1980, “Jewish Theologies of Space in theScientific Revolution: Henry More, Joseph Raphson, Isaac Newton andtheir Predecessors”,Annals of Science, 37:489–548.
• Coudert, A. P., 1990, “Henry More and Witchcraft”, inHutton (ed.),Henry More (1614–1687), pp.115–36.
• –––, 1992, “Henry More, the Kabbalah, andthe Quakers”, in R. Kroll, R. Ashcraft, and P. Zagorin (eds),Philosophy, Science, and Religion in England,1640–1700,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.31–67.
• Cristofolini, P., 1974,Cartesiani e sociniani: Studio suHenry More, Urbino: Argalia.
• Crocker, R., 1990, “Mysticism and Enthusiasm in HenryMore”, in Hutton (ed.),Henry More (1614–1687),pp. 137–56.
• –––, 2003,Henry More, 1614–1687: ABiography of the Cambridge Platonist, Dordrecht: KluwerAcademic.
• Gabbey, A., 1982, “Philosophia CartesianaTriumphata: Henry More (1646–1671)”, in N. Davis andT. Lennon (eds),Problems of Cartesianism, Toronto:McGill-Queens University Press, pp. 171–250.
• –––, 1990, “Henry More and the Limits ofMechanism”, in Hutton (ed.),Henry More(1614–1687), pp. 19–36.
• –––, 1992, “Cudworth, More, and theMechanical Analogy”, in R. Kroll, R. Ashcraft, and P. Zagorin(eds),Philosophy, Science, and Religion in England,1640–1700, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.109–27.
• Grant, E., 1981,Much Ado About Nothing: Theories of Space andVacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Grobet, L. B., 2010, “Is Descartes a Materialist? TheDescartes-More Controversy about the Universe as Indefinite”,Dialogue, 49: 517–26.
• Guinsberg, A. M., 1980, “Henry More, Thomas Vaughan and theLate Renaissance Magical Tradition”,Ambix, 27:36–58.
• Hall, A. R., 1990,Henry More: Magic, Religion, andExperiment, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Reissued asHenry Moreand the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1996.
• Hedley, D. and Hengstermann, C. (eds),An Anthology of theCambridge Platonists: Sources and Commentary, London and NewYork: Routledge.
• Hengstermann, C., 2017, “Pre-existence and UniversalSalvation – the Origenian Renaissance in Early ModernCambridge”,British Journal for the History ofPhilosophy, 25: 971–89.
• –––, 2020, “God or Space and Nature? HenryMore’s Panentheism of Space and Panpsychism of Life andNature”, in G. Brüntrup, B.P. Göcke, and L. Jaskolla(eds),Panentheism and Panpsychism: Philosophy of Religion MeetsPhilosophy of Mind, Leiden, Brill, pp. 157–89.
• Henry, J., 1986, “A Cambridge Platonist’s Materialism:Henry More and the Concept of Soul”,Journal of the Warburgand Courtauld Institutes, 49: 172–95.
• –––, 1987, “Medicine and Pneumatology:Henry More, Richard Baxter and Francis Glisson’sTreatise onthe Energetic Nature of Substance”,MedicalHistory, 31: 15–40.
• –––, 1989, “The Matter of Souls: MedicalTheory and Theology in Seventeenth-Century England”, in R. K.French and A. Wear (eds),The Medical Revolution in theSeventeenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp.87–113.
• –––, 1990, “Henry More versus RobertBoyle: The Spirit of Nature and the Nature of Providence”, inHutton (ed.),Henry More (1614–1687), pp.55–76.
• –––, 1993, “Henry More and Newton’sGravity”,History of Science, 31: 83–97.
• –––, 2011, “Omnipotence and ThinkingMatter: John Locke and the Use of Reason in Religion”, in D.Giovannozzi and M. Veneziani (eds),Materia, Atti del XIIIColloquio Internazionale del Lessico Intelletuale Europeo (Roma,7–9 gennaio, 2010), Florence: Leo S. Olschki, pp.357–79.
• –––, 2020, “Primary and SecondaryCausation in Samuel Clarke’s and Isaac Newton’s Theoriesof Gravity”,Isis, 111: 542–61.
• –––, 2021, “Hobbes’s MechanicalPhilosophy and Its English Critics”, in M.P. Adams (ed.),ACompanion to Hobbes, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp.381–97.
• –––, 2022, “Sir Kenelm Digby, theImmortality of the Soul, and Philosophical Theology inSeventeenth-Century England”, in L. Georgescu and A.T.Adriaenssen (eds),The Philosophy of Kenelm Digby(1603–1665), Cham: Springer, pp. 89–112.
• Hutton, S., 1984, “Reason and Revelation in the CambridgePlatonists, and their Reception of Spinoza”, in K. Gründerand W. Schmidt-Biggeman (eds),Spinoza in der Frühzeit seinerReligiösen Wirkung, Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider.
• ––– (ed.), 1990,Henry More(1614–1687): Tercentenary Studies, Dordrecht: KluwerAcademic Publishers.
• ––– (ed.), 1994, “Henry More and theApocalypse”, in M. Wilks (ed.),Prophecy andEschatology, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 131–40.
• –––, 2004,Anne Conway: A WomanPhilosopher, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2020, “Henri More et Descartes: unecopie manuscrite de leur correspondance dans leNotebook deThomas Clerke (1654)”,Bulletin cartésien, 49:162–67.
• –––, 2021, “Reinventing the VegetableSoul? More’s Spirit of Nature and Cudworth’s PlasticNature Reconsidered”, in F. Baldassarri, and A. Blank (eds),Vegetative Powers, Cham, Springer, pp. 291–304.
• Jacob, A., 1991,Henry More’s Refutation ofSpinoza, Hildesheim: Georg Olms.
• Joseph, J., 2019, “The Spirit of Nature and the Spirit ofGod”, in J.F. Finamore, and T. Nejeschleba (eds),Platonismand Its Legacy, Lydney: Prometheus Trust, pp. 369–86.
• –––, 2023, “Whither Natural Magic?Science, Witchcraft, and the Decline of Magic in Henry More”,Isis, 114: 299–316.
• Koyré, A., 1957,From the Closed World to the InfiniteUniverse, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Laerke, M., 2017, “Three Texts on the Kabbalah: More,Wachter, Leibniz, and the Philosophy of the Hebrews”,British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 25:1011–1030.
• Leech, D., 2013,The Hammer of the Cartesians: HenryMore’s Philosophy of Spirit and the Origins of ModernAtheism, Leuwen: Peeters.
• Muratori, C., 2017, “‘In human shape to become thevery beast!’ – Henry More on Animals”,BritishJournal for the History of Philosophy, 25: 897–915.
• Reid, J., 2003, “Henry More on Material and SpiritualExtension”,Dialogue, 42: 531–58.
• –––, 2007, “The Evolution of HenryMore’s Theory of Divine Absolute Space”,Journal ofthe History of Philosophy, 45: 79–102.
• –––, 2008, “The Spatial Presence ofSpirits among the Cartesians”,Journal of the History ofPhilosophy, 46: 91–118.
• –––, 2012,The Metaphysics of HenryMore, Dordrecht: Springer.
• –––, 2018, “The Cambridge Platonists:Material and Immaterial Substance”, in R. Copenhaver (ed.),Philosophy of Mind in the Early Modern and Modern Ages,London and New York: Routledge, 43–68.
• Sangiacomo, A., 2018, “Samuel Clarke on Agent Causation,Voluntarism, and Occasionalism”,Science in Context,31: 421–56.
• Scott, A., 1991,Origen and the Life of the Stars: A Historyof an Idea , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Sytsma, D. S., 2017,Richard Baxter and the MechanicalPhilosophers, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Taliaferro, C., 2005,Evidence and Faith: Philosophy andReligion since the Seventeenth Century, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.
• Thomas, E., 2018,Absolute Time: Rifts in Early Modern BritishMetaphysics, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Thomson, A., 2008,Bodies of Thought: Science, Religion, andthe Soul in the Early Enlightenment, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.
• Tulloch, J. H., 1874,Rational Theology and ChristianPhilosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols.,Edinburgh.
• Webster, C., 1969, “Henry More and Descartes: Some Newsources”,British Journal for the History of Science,4: 359–77.

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Other Internet Resources

• More’sCollection of Severall Philosophical Writings (1662)
• G. W. Leibniz’s notes on More’sEnchiridion ethicum (1667) andImmortality of the Soul (1659)
• The Cambridge Platonist Sourcebook

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