OCCULTISM AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
FOOTNOTES
1. I treat the occultist background to seventeenth-century philosophy much more fully in my chapter: ‘Okkulte Strömungen im 17. Jahrhundert,’ in Ueberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, Series V, Part 1, ed. J.-P. Schobinger (Basel: Schwabe, 1998), 196–224.
2. In the present paper, I have space only to interpret seventeenth-century philosophers, not to discuss the very difficult and important problems about the theory of interpretation — in particular the challenges raised by Donald Davidson in his ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’, in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association 47 (1973–4) 5–20. I say something about them in my paper, ‘Angels’, Philosophy 60, 1985, 499–515. Space also prevents me from discussing how we should transcend the limitations of the by now familiar distinction between ‘internalist’ and ‘externalist’ explanations. See, for example, J.R. Ravetz, ‘Francis Bacon and the Reform of Philosophy’, in Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance, ed. A.G. Debus, Vol. II (London, 1972), 97–119, esp. pp.97–8; J.R.R. Christie & J.V. Golinski, ‘The Spreading of the Word: New Directions in the Historiography of Chemistry 1600–1800’, in History of Science, 20 (1982) 235–266, esp. pp.235–7. Nor can I go into the fascinating question of why Anglo-Saxon historians of philosophy have tended to confine themselves to internalist history (‘why’ both in the sense of understanding their rationale, and of placing their internalism in the context of philosophy as a social institution). See David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery (London, 1976), Chapter 1.
3. cf. Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy (Cambridge, 1975).
4. For example, A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (London, 1936); Bronislaw Malinowski, ‘Magic, Science and Religion’ (1925), reprinted in Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (New York, 1954) 17–92.
5. Most sceptical are Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. xxxiv, and Spinoza, Cogitata metaphysica, in Opera, ed. C. Gebhardt (Heidelberg, 1924–6), I. 275.
6. For example, Marin Mersenne, Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim (Paris, 1623) 583ff. And even if necromancy were possible, it was still a sin: Leviticus xix.3, xx.27; Deuteronomy, xviii.10-11.
7. For example, John Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft (London, 1677) 165. Webster also criticises the Authorized Version for referring to her as the ‘witch’ of Endor in the headings to I. Samuel xviii. The translators may well have been influenced by King James’s having called her a witch in his Daemonologie (Edinburgh, 1597) 29.
8. For example, Reginald Scot, Treatise upon the Nature and Substance of Spirits and Divels, etc. (London, 1584), Ch. xxxii.
9. For example, King James, Daemonologie, (Edinburgh, 1597) 61, 95.; Johann Heinrich Decker, Spectrologia (Hamburg, 1690), 145ff.
10. For example, John Webster, The displaying of supposed witchcraft (London, 1677) 311–320.
11. For example, Méric Casaubon, A True and Faithful Relation of . . . Dr. John Dee . . . and some Spirits (London, 1659), and William Lilly, History of his Life and Times, from the Year 1602-1684, Written by himself, ed. Elias Ashmole (London, 1715), reprinted as The Last [sic!] of the Astrologers, ed. K.M. Briggs (London, 1974).
12. Robert Kirk, The Secret Commonwealth, ed. S.F. Sanderson (Cambridge & Totowa, 1976). Cf. Robert Boyle, Works, ed. T. Birch (London, 1744), Vol. I (Life, &c.) 119–130.
13. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London, 1949) 15.
14. A good example of Descartes’ fudging of the problem of interaction between thought and extension is to be found in his First Thoughts on the Generation of Animals (Adam & Tannery, XI. 518–9), where he talks as if spirits were such that only an infinitesimal force is needed to deflect them — in other words, they are exactly on the interface between the material and the immaterial.
15. This is how I take his remarks to Princess Elizabeth: Adam & Tannery, Vol. III, esp. pp.665–6, 691–3.
16. Not only materialists have made this point. It is expressed very sharply by Leibniz in the Theodicy, Part 1, §§60–61. Leibniz’s diagnosis of Descartes’ mistake as due to a defective formulation of the laws of motion is not only a very perceptive piece of historical reconstruction, but a shining example of sympathetic historiography. It is, however, just possible that Descartes was more explicit in lost MSS studied by Leibniz when in Paris.
17. A.J.P. Kenny, ‘The Homunculus Fallacy’, in Interpretations of Life and Mind, ed. M. Grene (London, 1972) 65–74; Jonathan Rée, Descartes (London, 1974) 63–4, 121–3.
18. Henry More, Enchyridion metaphysicum (London, 1671) I. 27.
19. Principia, 3rd Edn. (London, 1726) 530.
20. This is a Leibnizian commonplace. See, for example, the Preface to the Nouveaux Essais, Academy edition (VI.6), ed. Robinet & Schepers, pp.645. His comments on occult qualities on p.68 are identical in spirit with Molière’s joke in the 3rd Interlude of Le Malade Imaginaire (1673): "BACHELIERUS: ‘Mihi a docto doctore / Domandatur causam et rationem quare / Opium facit dormire. / A quoi respondeo, / Quia est in eo / Virtus dormitiva, / Cujus est natura / Sensus assoupire.’"
21. Opticks, Bk.III, Pt.i., Qn.3, ad fin. (Dover Edn., 1979) 401; letter to Bentley of 25.2.1692/3, in Four Letters from Sir Isaac Newton to Doctor Bentley (London, 1756) 23–32, reprinted in Isaac Newton’s Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy, ed. I. Bernard Cohen (Cambridge, 1958) 300–309.
22. Marielene Putscher, Pneuma, Spiritus, Geist. Vorstellungen vom Lebensantreib in ihnen geschichtlichen Wandlungen (Wiesbaden, 1973).
23. Helen Farquhar, ‘Royal Charities. Touchpieces for the King’s Evil’, in The British Numismatics Journal 12 (1916) 39–135; 13 (1917) 95–163; 14 (1918) 89–120; 15 (1919) 141–184; Marc Bloch, Les Rois Thaumaturges (Strasbourg, 1924); Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Harmondsworth, 1978) 227–244; G. MacDonald Ross, ‘The Royal Touch and the Book of Common Prayer’, in Notes and Queries 30, 1983, 433–435.
24. Valentine Greatrakes, A Brief Account of Mr. Valentine Greatrak’s, and divers of the strange Cures by him (London, 1666); Henry Stubbe, The Miraculous Conformist (Oxford, 1666); Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus (London, 1681) Pt.I, pp.90ff.; Pt.II, p.247; Robert Boyle, Works, ed. T. Birch (London, 1744) Vol. I (Life, &c.) pp.45–53; Anne Conway, Conway Letters. The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More and their Friends, 1642-8, ed. M.H. Nicolson (London, 1930) 244–275.
25. For example, Henry More, An Antidote against Atheisme (London, 1653); Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus (London, 1681).
26. For the seventeenth century, the important contrast was between ‘natural’ and ‘demonic’ magic. Boyle, More, and Glanvill were among those who insisted on the reality of demonic magic. Among those who explained witchcraft away as at most natural magic were Johann Wier, De praestigiis daemonum et incantationibus et veneficiis (Basel, 1563); Reginald Scot, Treatise upon the Nature and Substance of Spirits and Divels, etc. (London, 1584); Tobias Tandler, Dissertationes physicae-medicae (Wittenberg, 1613); Thomas Ady, A Candle in the Dark (London, 1656); John Wagstaffe, The Question of Witchcraft debated; or a discourse against their Opinion that affirm Witches (London, 1669); and John Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft (London, 1677). It is one of the theses of this paper that what was intentionally dubbed ‘natural magic’ cannot be straightforwardly divided into the ‘natural’ and the ‘magical’. In so far as such a division can be made, Webster is probably on the magical side: assuming (with the Dictionary of National Biography) that he was identical with the author of Academiarum examen (London, 1654), he was described by Thomas Hall, in his Vindiciae literarum (London, 1654), 199, as belonging to the ‘Familiastical-Levelling-Magicall temper’. Cf. P.M. Rattansi, ‘Paracelsus and the Puritan Revolution’, in Ambix 11 (1963) 24–32, esp. p.29.
27. The variety of approaches to alchemy is reflected in modern interpretations. At one extreme alchemy is seen primarily as the matrix of modern technology (e.g. Robert Multhauf, The Origins of Chemistry [London, 1966]), at the other, primarily as mystical and symbolic (e.g. C.G. Jung, Psychologie und Alchemie [Zurich, 1944]). Most other historians fall between these two extremes. An alternative emphasis on the rhetorical and didactic dimensions is given by Owen Hannaway’s The Chemists and the Word (Baltimore & London, 1975).
28. Allgemeine und General Reformation der gantzen weiten Welt. Beneben der Fama Fraternitatis, dess Löblichen Ordens des Rosenkreutzes (Cassel, 1614). Cf. Will-Erich Peuckert, Die Rosenkreutzer (Jena, 1928); Paul Arnold, Histoire des Rose-Croix et les origines de la Franc-Maçonnerie (Paris, 1955); Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London, 1972), and my review-article, ‘Rosicrucianism and the English Connection’, in Studia Leibnitiana 5 (1973) 239–245.
29. A typical Protestant attack on the magic of Catholicism was that of Jean-Baptiste Thiers, Traité des superstitions (Paris, 1679); and there is much of the same throughout Hobbes’s Leviathan. Cf. also Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Harmondsworth, 1978), ch. 2. Note also Descartes’ attempt to demystify transubstantiation by explaining it in materialistic terms: Replies to Objections IV, sub fin.
30. This tendency is particularly evident throughout the correspondence with Clarke.
31. 1 expand on this theme in my Past Masters: Leibniz (Oxford, OUP, 1984). For Bacon, see Paolo Rossi, Francesco Bacone: Dalla Magia alla Scienzia (Bari, 1957), translated by S. Rabinovitch as Francis Bacon, From Magic to Science (London, 1968); and J.R. Ravetz, ‘Francis Bacon and the Reform of Philosophy’, in Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance, ed. A.G. Debus, Vol. II (London, 1972).
32. I refer, of course, to Thrasymachus’s ploy in reply to Socrates’s point that rulers sometimes make mistakes (Republic, Bk. I.).
33. A singularly clear account of the contemporary state of play is to be found in Francesco Suárez, De anima III.ii, xvii, in Opera omnia, ed. André & Berton (Paris, 1856–61) III.525–6, 670–3. Plato’s theory is expounded in Theaetetus 156A–E, Timaeus 45B–46C.
34. On fascination in general, see Daniel Sennert, Medicina practica VI.9, in Opera (Paris, 1641); Johann Christian Frommann, Tractatus de fascinatione novus et singularis in quo fascinatio vulgaris profligatur, naturalis confirmatur, et magica examinatur (Nuremberg, 1675); and the otherwise markedly anti-occultist Etienne Chauvin, Lexicon rationale, sive thesaurus philosophicus, s.v. ‘fascinatio’ [ff. Ff recto to Ff2 verso]. Bacon, on the other hand, attributed any genuine cases to demonic agency: Sylva sylvarum, Cent.10, §950. Belief in the influence of imagination on the foetus seems to derive from Avicenna and Algazel: Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science VII (New York, 1958) 476. Cf. Johannes Kepler, Opera omnia, ed. C. Frisch (Frankfurt & Erlangen, 1858–71) II.726, V.263; Descartes, Traité de l’homme, Adam & Tannery, XI.176; Pierre Gassendi, De phantasia, in Opera, ed. Habert de Montmor & Henri (Lyons, 1658) II.424.
35. See in particular, Galileo, Il saggiatore (Rome, 1623) 196–9 [The Assayer, tr. S. Drake (New York, 1957) 273ff.]; Descartes, Traité de la lumière, Ch.1: ‘Of the difference between our sensations and the things that produce them’, in Adam & Tannery, XI.3–6.
36. Berkeley diagnosed Locke’s failure to see the absurdity of his position as due to his belief in the ‘wonderful [= magical?] faculty’ of abstracting ideas: Principles, Introduction, §10. Leibniz avoided the problem in the first instance by claiming that ideas of secondary qualities were really confused perceptions of secondary ones: Nouveaux essais, II.viii.11–21. But ultimately his solution was an almost Berkeleian phenomenalism: see my ‘Leibniz’s Phenomenalism and the Construction of Matter’, in G.-W.-Leibniz-Gesellschaft, Leibniz’ Dymanica (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1984) 26–36.
37. I suspect hidden dimensions to the irony of J.M. Keynes’s description of Newton as ‘the last of the magicians’: cf. ‘Newton, the Man’, in The Royal Society: Newton Tercentenary Celebrations (Cambridge, 1947) 27–34, esp. p.29.
38. Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft (London, 1677) pp.17, 267–70.
39. e.g. Essay, IV.iii.24. Strictly, ‘we cannot so much as guess’!
40. e.g. Essay, II.xxiii.13; IV.iii.6, ad fin.
41. e.g. Essay, II.viii.15; xxx.2.
42. cf. the example of the wax in Med. 2, and of the sun in Med. 3.
43. Essay, II.viii.8: ‘Which ideas, if I speak of sometimes as in the things themselves, I would be understood to mean those qualities in the objects which produce them in us.’ I am aware that some commentators have interpreted this sentence differently.
44. e.g. Essay, I.i.15; II.ii.1; iii.1; ix.15; xi.17.
45. e.g. John Dee, Monas hieroglyphica (Antwerp, 1564), repr. in Ambix XII (1964) 112–221; Johannes Kepler, Mysterium cosmographicum (1596).
46. Cf. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Harmondsworth, 1978) 426–7, 430–1.
47. Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks, ed. Ed. MacCurdy (London, 1938), II.363–380.
48. Gassendi, for example, insisted that ‘species, i.e. images emanating from bodies’ were material: Epistle II De apparente magnitudine solis humilis et sublimis §5, in Opera (Lyons, 1658) III.425.
50. John Wilkins, Mercury, Or the Secret and Swift Messenger, shewing how a Man may with privacy and speed communicate his Thoughts to a Friend at any distance (London, 1641) 118–22, 148.
51. Robert Fludd, Tractatus de geomantia, pp.3–70 of Fasciculus geomanticus, in quo varia variorum opera geomantica continentur (Verona, 1687).
52. Franz Mesmer, Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal (Geneva, 1779).
53. Gareth Knight, A History of White Magic (London & Oxford, 1978) Ch.1.
54. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the important similarities between Descartes’ Meditations, and Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. In my view, they are still understated by Pierre Mesnard, ‘L’arbre de la sagesse’, Cahiers de Royaumont, Philosophie, No. II (Paris, 1957). Cf. esp. Versio vulgata, ed. Calveras & Dalmases (Rome, 1969) 140, 160, 172. On the other hand, however close the analogies, it remains the case that the principal purpose, of Descartes’ Meditations is the discovery of natural science rather than wisdom. This puts him firmly in the camp of occultist enthusiasts as contrasted with religious mystics.
55. Pansophie: Part 2: Gabalia, Ein Versuch zur Geschichte der magia naturalis im 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1967) 20.
56. There is another demarcation problem between mysticism, heresy, and cabalism. One way of taking Descartes’ Meditations is to see him as discovering his being as a mode of the substance Thought. But how is unlimited, infinite Thought to be distinguished from God himself? Since his introspection discovers the concept/essence/being of God embedded in his very thinking, how is he not himself identical with, or at least part of, God? That would be the Heresy of the Free Spirit, which developed in Holland as an off-shoot of the mysticism of Meister Eckhart. Cf. Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1972). No wonder most of the proof of God’s existence in Med. III is really a proof that Descartes is not God! As for Cabalism, it is perhaps not just a coincidence that Descartes repeats the phrase ‘Ego sum’ almost as a meditational mantra – and EGO SUM is one of the names of God (Exodus iii.14). Perhaps instead of the slogan, cogito ergo sum, which does not occur in the Meditations anyway, we should substitute the slogan: Dubito, ergo non sum Deus.
57. e.g. Leibniz, Philosophischen Schriften IV, ed. Gerhard (Berlin, 1880) 328.
58. Adrien Baillet, La vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes (Paris, 1691) I.87ff. See also Henri Gouhier, Les premières pensées de Descartes (Paris, 1958) 117–141; Arnold, Histoire des Rose-Croix et les origines de la Franc-Maçonnerie (Paris, 1955) 273–299. Modern historians have correctly nailed the many myths about Descartes, such as his membership of the Rosicrucian brotherhood, and his discovery of the secret of prolonging life, as in Gabriel Daniel, Voiage du monde de Descartes (Paris, 1690) 45ff.: ‘Que M. Descartes n’est pas mort.’ On the other hand, it is an important historical fact about how Descartes was perceived by his contemporaries that such myths could have arisen. For other suggestions of Cartesian occultism, cf. Ravetz, ‘Francis Bacon and the Reform of Philosophy’, in Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance, ed. A.G. Debus, Vol. II (London, 1972) 99–100, and Westfall, ibid., 186–7. It is also worth adding that the concept of an evil genius, while fanciful to us, would have seemed quite commonplace in the spiritualist climate of the seventeenth century.
59. Oswald Croll, Basilica chymica (Frankfurt, 1609) 13, 26–7: ‘Supremae universitatis unicus Rector [translated by H. Pinnell, Philosophy Reformed and Improved (London, 1657) 23, as ‘the One onely Governour of the supream Universe’] . . . Omnes per retrogressionem discunt a primo, et hic a Deo, qui ei scientiam creavit . . . gnothi seauton . . . vera via (secundum Apollinis Delphici oraculum . . .) ad veram Sapientiam . . . a se ipso primum exordiri: sic quod Homo intelligens se ipsum, in seipso, tanquam in quodam Deifico Speculo intueatur . . . concreata est nobis omnibus Rerum Notio . . . Lumine Naturae . . . cognoscitur Deus . . . et potest Homo bonam, magnamque partem cognitionis eius Qui est, ex sui ipsius consideratione venari . . .’
60. It could be argued that the belief that conceptual analysis can uncover new truths about reality is as superstitious as any other epistemology. From this point of view, Leibniz is very much in the tradition of Lullian mysticism.
63. Essay, IV.ii.1: ‘This part of knowledge is irresistible and, like bright sunshine, forces itself immediately to be perceived, as soon as ever the mind turns its view that way; and leaves no room for hesitation, doubt, or examination, but the mind is presently filled with the clear light of it.’
64. Cf. the English translation of della Porta’s Magia naturalis: Natural Magick (London, 1658) [repr., New York, 1957] Bk.I, Chh.2, 7: pp.2, 8.
65. cf. Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755), s.v. EMPIRIC: ‘A trier; an experimenter; such persons as have no true education in, or knowledge of physical practice, but venture upon hearsay and observation only . . . Known only by experience; practised only by rote, without rational grounds . . . Experimentally; according to experience . . . without rational ground; charlatanically; in the manner of quacks. EMPIRICISM: Dependence on experience without knowledge or art; quackery.’
66. The Outlines of Pyrrhonism, and Against the Mathematicians.
67. In particular, Books XVII–XIX: De catoptricis imaginibus, De staticis experimentis, and De pneumaticis.
68. I do not see this dimension as essentially sociological, as would be implied by calling it ‘externalist’ (cf. n.2, above). A merely externalist interpretation cannot take proper account of how different intellectual factions viewed each other — a question which belongs neither to sociology nor to the internal logic of theories and concepts considered in abstract. The notion of intention serves as a useful bridge by incorporating a rhetorical dimension.
69. I have not gone into the question of the secretiveness of some of the new philosophers. Descartes planned the appearance of his philosophical system in the manner of a political dissident organizing a coup, and he rebuked Regius for being too open about the ultimate objectives of his philosophical revolution. Cf. Hiram Caton, The Origin of Subjectivity (New Haven & London 1973), Ch.1.
70. E M. Schur, Labeling Deviant Behavior (New York, 1971). For its application to the closely related topic of witchcraft, see C.J. Larner, Enemies of God (London, 1981) 98–100.
71. An interesting example of the alliance is the way in which astrological almanacs helped spread the new ideas. Cf. Bernard Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press (London & Boston, 1979), Ch.6.
72. I have already given many examples of the mechanisation of the occultist ;world-picture, and of disagreements as to what was to count as occult. A well-known example of an attempt at empirical verification is the Brief Lives of John Aubrey (1626–97), which was intended as a mass of observational data on which to base astrological correlations.
73. In modern times, one might contrast the parade of statistical orthodoxy of J.B. Rhine and S.G. Soal in the field of ESP, and of Michel Gauquelin in the field of astrology, with the disdain of logic shown by high-status scientists such as nuclear physicists (even some logicians concede that logic is the handmaiden of physics).
74. For example, in 1665 the Hermeticists made a nearly successful bid to found a ‘Noble Society for the advancement of Hermetick Physick’ in opposition to the medical establishment: P.M. Rattansi, ‘The Helmontian-Galenist Controversy in Restoration England’, in Ambix 12 (1964) 1–23, esp. p.13. For a while there was a flourishing ‘Astrologers’ Club’, which was not unlike the future Royal Society: Elias Ashmole (1617–1692), ed. C.H. Josten (Oxford, 1966), Index, s.v. ‘Astrologers’ Club’.
75. See n.28, above, and D. Knoop & G.P. Jones, The Genesis of Freemasonry Manchester, 1957), and Karl R.H. Frick, Die Erleuchteten (Graz, 1973).
76. See my ‘Leibniz and the Nuremberg Alchemical Society’, in Studia Leibnitiana 6 (1974) 222–248; ‘Leibniz and Alchemy’, in Magia naturalis und die Entstehung der modernen Naturwissenschaften, Studia Leibnitiana, Sonderheft 7 (1978) 166–180; ‘Alchemy and the Development of Leibniz’s Metaphysics’, in Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa 22 (1982) 40–45.
77. At the beginning of the century, any distinction between alchemy and chemistry was not a distinction between superstition and science. For example, Andreas Libavius’s Alchemia is praised by Hannaway: The Chemists and the Word (Baltimore & London, 1975) for its modernity in comparison with Croll’s Basilica chymica. Libavius himself makes a distinction within ‘alchemy’ between ‘chymia’ and ‘encheria’ — but this has nothing to do with the modern chemistry/alchemy distinction. Indicative of the change in meaning is a casual remark by Gottfried Thomasius, in an unpublished letter to Leibniz of 31.7.1696: ‘one of the Chemists, or, if you prefer, Alchemists.’ (Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, Hannover: Leibniz-Briefe 925, Bl.12v.)
78. Including a number of beliefs and attitudes which have subsequently been reinstated. The eighteenth-century scientists of Paris were much harder on superstition, with their refusal to accept reports of heavenly bodies landing on earth, than their modern counterparts in the Groupe d’Études des Phénomènes Spatiaux (Sunday Times, 20.2.83).
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