Sudden Apprehension: Aspects of Knowledge in Paradise Lost 9783110889949, 9789027932532

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STUDIES IN ENGLISH Volume XCIV

LITERATURE

SUDDEN APPREHENSION ASPECTS OF KNOWLEDGE IN PARADISE

LOST

by

LEE A. JACOBUS University of Connecticut

1976 MOUTON THE HAGUE • PARIS

© Copyright 1976 Mouton & Co. B.V., Publishers, The Hague No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers

ISBN 90 279 3253 0

Printed in the Nederlands

for French Rowe Fogle

PREFACE

This is primarily a critical examination of the uses of knowledge, from the knowledge of self to the knowledge of God, in Paradise Lost. Such a study must be well informed by certain kinds of intellectual history, particularly the history of philosophies of knowledge as they would have been pertinent to Milton and his time. Further, some background relevant to logic and its varieties is essential since logic was taught in all schools in England in the Renaissance. Milton and innumerable commentators credited logic with being the art of reason, and reason is central to the problem of knowledge. Consequently the earliest chapter of this study establishes Milton's position in the reason-faith controversy, while later chapters are concerned with the process of knowledge, the means of obtaining it, the value of it once it is obtained, and the kinds of knowledge which are most significantly treated in the poem. Always, however, the concern of this study is for the poem and our heightened awareness of what is actually happening within the poem. These later chapters develop a critical reading that shows Milton's concern for knowledge was vastly more complex than is implied in the interdiction against touching the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Milton's attitudes toward sensory perception and the judgment and ultimate knowledge which result from such perception are surprisingly Aristotelian, and not as unalterably Platonic as recent studies of the poet's Platonism might lead us to believe. Further, one of the most significant and striking aspects of Milton's grand design in Paradise Lost becomes plain from an examination of the physics of the poem: and that is the

8

PREFACE

monism implied by an epistemology which credits sensory experience in Heaven, Hell, and on earth. The first critical chapter deals with the most immediate problem of knowledge to the characters in the poem: the problem of selfknowledge. This chapter suggests that Milton conceived the problem of self-knowledge in a complex and functional manner. It is a guide to the ultimate action of the poem, in some ways, and selfknowledge is surely a guide - as it must be in the larger Christian context - to the moral condition of the characters. The following chapter, "Physics: 'The Knowledge of Natural Things'", begins with the knowledge of the stars, traditionally that knowledge at the farthest remove from self-knowledge. The knowledge of natural things in Paradise Lost is a vast subject, to be sure. But even a relatively brief treatment of the subject shows that Milton had a consistent and intelligible concept of the universe. His physics is not adventitiously appended to the poem, though his concern may not be quite Lucretian either. It seems that Milton's studies permitted him to conceive a universe for his poem which satisfied the demands of epic action, Renaissance reader, and his own advanced interests in astronomy, mathematics, and natural science. Milton gives some evidence of being in the mainstream of an intellectual tradition of systematizing natural science which dated from Peter Ramus' reworking of Aristotelian physics, through John Dee's "groundplat" for the mathematical arts, and on through Bacon to Hobbes and the so-called new materialism. The evidence in this chapter would seem to indicate that Milton's interest in forbidden knowledge - particularly relevant to astronomy and science - is less keen than his interest in showing how a knowledge of natural things could elevate one's understanding of God and His purposes. Milton seems to have been more than merely a casual commentator when he let Raphael suggest that things in Heaven and on earth may be far more alike than anyone had thought. The chapter on revelation concerns itself with the knowledge communicated at God's command to Adam by Raphael and Michael. One of the chief concerns of the chapter is the problem of accommodation - particularly as it is related to Adam within the

PREFACE

9

poem. Accommodation by the angel to the senses and conceptions of the human mind is of great importance to fallen man and to the reader particularly. And there are times when it is plain that the angels speak directly to the audience of the poem rather than just to Adam. But this chapter is concerned with accommodation as it is relevant to Adam and Eve - first as innocent, then as fallen. The symbolic value of the metaphysical actions described particularly by Raphael in Book VI has long been taken for granted for the audience. But for Adam this value may well have to be augmented by a more literal value. The war in Heaven, in other words, seems to have some physics mixed in with its metaphysics. Beyond the concern for accommodation, however, Chapter V deals with the tradition of Assurance literature which was particularly associated with Puritan divinity. It would not be unfair to suggest that the last two books of the poem could be profitably read as something of a treatise of Assurance leading toward restoring hope and faith through offering some knowledge of the future and the possibilities for the redemption of man. As Milton said, election is not to be thought of as individual but general. Hence Adam's regenerative spirit is soothed by the knowledge of the Saviour's eventual triumph. The influence of logic upon Paradise Lost is worth a book in itself. Not only did Milton write and publish a Latin logic for students, but he was himself a proficient student of the art. The question of whether Milton was more influenced by the logic of Aristotle or by the Dialecticae Libri Duo of Peter Ramus is an interesting historical and theoretical problem. Some work has been started toward attempting a solution. But this chapter is less concerned with the matter of influence than with demonstrating that there is a penetrating and brilliant logical character to the most critical scenes of the poem: those relative to the temptation and the Fall. There is not only evidence of the old-fashioned Aristotelian logicchopping in the argument between Adam and Eve relative to their parting and working separately, but there is also ample evidence of the merging of rhetoric and logic in the fashion of Ramus in the temptation scene itself. The syllogism is a prominent tool of reason in these scenes, and the consequent aesthetic problems Milton faced

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PREFACE

and solved appear by no means insignificant when one is aware of the demands that logic alone makes upon his poetic attention. The study ends with two discussions of the nature of God the Father and Christ. Like self-knowledge, the knowledge of God is relevant to all characters within the poem and to all readers of the poem. As Chapter VII shows, the monistic views Milton develops in connection with physics show up in this treatment of God as superior to Christ, His effective might, the mediator between God and man. But we also see in the final chapter that the "Ultimate Knowledge of God" is what separates the damned from the saved. And as we know from "Of Education" it is the lost knowledge of God that Adam and Eve must recover when they leave the Garden. If there is any such thing as a single problem of knowledge in Paradise Lost it must be the problem of sensory perception and its meaning. For Milton sensory experience is by no means detestable. It is not as unreliable a guide to knowledge as the skeptics felt it to be. Yet it is by no means sufficient by itself, any more than reason is sufficient without faith. But like reason, perception seems necessary throughout the universe if knowledge is to be had at all. It seems the key to Milton's monistic views.

ANOTE

Spelling peculiarities of seventeenth-century and sixteenth-century authors have been retained with the exception of the printer's conventions of using "v" for "u", "i" for "j", for "n" or "m", which have been silently normalized. Italicizing has, however, been retained as in the original, as have inconsistencies of spelling, and capitalizations. The text of Milton from which I quote, the Helen Darbishire text, was chosen partly for its retaining some of the original character of the orthography of the time. Particular mention must be made of the libraries which were of the utmost assistance in this project. I am grateful to the staff of the Honnold Library and the librarian of the Oxford Collection there. The staff of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library of the University of California at Los Angeles was most gracious. Mrs. Elizabeth Wrigley of the Francis Bacon Library in Claremont, California, was helpful and very generous of her time. The library of Columbia University in New York was again most welcome when I needed it. And like many researchers and scholars, I am pre-eminently grateful to the director, James Thorpe, Mary Isabel Fry of the Reference Room, and the staff and resources of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. The Francis Bacon Library, the Manuscript Room of Trinity College Library, Dublin, and the British Museum have all been generous with their materials and their time. I am grateful to the Danforth Foundation, which supported me during much of the research and early writing of this study. The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles also provided me with a summer grant to use their holdings. The Re-

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A NOTE

search Foundation of the University of Connecticut has also been generous in its support of this project. I would like to thank the editors of Milton Studies and the Huntington Library Quarterly for permission to reprint material which appeared in slightly different form in their pages. Finally, I want to recognize my debt to those teachers with whom I read and discussed Milton : Millicent Bell, Andrew Sabol, J. Max Patrick, French Fogle, and David Driscoll. L. A. J.

CONTENTS

Preface

7

A Note

11

List of Charts and Tables

14

I. II.

Milton, Reason, and Faith

15

Self-Knowledge in Paradise Lost: Conscience and Contemplation

22

III.

Physics: "The Knowledge of Natural Things" .

45

IV.

Revelation and Accommodation

V. VI. VII. Vin.

.

The Doctrines of Christian Assurance

.

.

.

.

89 .

107

Logic in the Garden

119

The "Back Parts" of God

167

The Ultimate Knowledge of God

.

.

.

197

Bibliography

213

Index

223

LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES

1. General Table of Ramus' Dialectic 2. Ramus'Chart of Physics 3. John Dee's "Groundplat" for the Mathematical Preface 4. Robert Fludd, Title-Page of Utriusque Cosmi 5. Bacon's "Partition of Knowledge in Generall" . . 6. Bacon's Chart of Mathematics (Reconstructed) . 7. Hobbes's Table of Sciences 8. Ramus' Praelium Terrestre 9. Table of Rudolph Agricola's Place-Logic . . . 10. Rudolph Agricola's Table of Loci 11. Ramus'Table of Logic 12. William Ames's Table of Logic 13. Abraham Fraunce's Logical Analysis of Vergil's Second Aeclogue 14. Abraham Fraunce's Logical Analysis of Vergil's Second Aeclogue (cont.) 15. Table of Logic from Abraham Fraunce's Lawiers Logike 16. William Ames's Chart of God's Sufficiency . . 17. William Ames's Chart of God's Efficiency . . . 18. William Perkins' Chart of the Persons of God . . 19. Chart of the Nature of God from John Wilkins' Ecclesiastes

62 63 66 77 79 81 83 127 130 131 133 138 150 151 155 170 171 175 176177

I MILTON, REASON, AND FAITH

In his prefatory comments to a collection of critical essays on Descartes, Willis Doney observes that "the theory of knowledge or epistemology has occupied - on some estimates preoccupied a great many philosophers in English-speaking countries." 1 Doney is both accurate and conservative. Not only have a great many English-speaking philosophers and divines been deeply interested in establishing satisfactory theories of knowledge, but so have many European philosophers and divines, scholastic and anti-scholastic. And the most prominent of ancient Greek philosophers have devoted considerable energy and thought toward clarifying the character and limits of human knowledge. From Pyrrho to Descartes, Aristotle to Bacon, Aquinas to Calvin - and beyond these arbitrary limits in both directions - what we can know and believe as truth has figured prominently in the suppositions and expositions of philosophical, theological, and scientific doctrine. Certainly few ages in European - and particularly English intellectual history have been as deeply embroiled in epistemological struggles as the seventeenth century. The dualism of reason and faith, the defeat of scholasticism, the rise of scientific monism, the mechanical-materialistic conceptions of the universe, and the eager skepticism, both creative and destructive, of Milton's time all had their roots in the epistemological questions raised by Aristotle and Plato and the differing values they accorded - in terms of authenticity and ultimate significance - the knowledge gathered by our senses. If Plato praised and trusted universals and generals (the 1

Willis Doney, ed., Descartes, A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City, 1967), 7.

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MILTON, REASON, AND FAITH

ideas and forms which underlie all visible surfaces) and disdained particulars or specials (the accidents of objects) - thus placing a very low value on the meaningfulness of sensory experience Aristotle attempted to elevate the role of particulars by asserting that the knowledge gained by the senses leads us to an understanding of universals. Thus the Cambridge Platonists, in their antagonism to Cartesian dualism and Hobbes, found themselves closely aligned with the Platonic side of the question, while Bacon and others who strove to create an inductive method of scientific analysis beginning with particulars of observation - necessarily based on sensory experience and the collection of large amounts of data in advance of proposing conclusions - found themselves more closely aligned with Aristotle. And this was true despite the fact that the struggle against scholasticism was a struggle against the dominance of Aristotelian logic and Aristotelian teaching as adapted and formulated by the Church. The scholastics, too, based their teachings and belief on the Aristotelian progress of understanding universals through particulars. Among the controversies which figured powerfully in Milton's time were the struggles between reason and faith, a dualism Margaret L. Wiley referred to as the outstanding dualism of the century, and its concomitant dualism (which often became an uneasy monism in the minds of believers) of skepticism and fideism.2 The dualism which characterizes much of the thought of Bacon is essentially a convenient evasion of responsibility to the religious question since it puts off the matter of inductive reasoning in religious affairs and seems to make Bacon's thinking strictly scientific and in no way threatening to the basic views of the religious thinkers. In Descartes, too, matters of religion were to come under a separate intellectual authority from matters of nature. Such thinking was welcome in many quarters. Many of the anti-scholastics found it particularly welcome and declared that for the benefit of religion and faith, faith should be kept distinct from reason. Reason was too unreliable for the great matters of religion. 3 Margaret L. Wiley, The Subtle Knot (Cambridge, 1952), 208f. The reasonfaith controversy has been also referred to as "the standing dualism of a millenium".

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17

Thus the ancient philosophy of Pyrrho was reborn in a new shape as a vital skepticism, often in league with the advances of science, eventually becoming an irrational acceptance of religious beliefs or fideism. In the face of powerful assertions that no knowledge man could obtain through his sensory organs or from the testimony of others could be wholly trustworthy or valid, the only real alternative for those who professed belief was a declaration of faith. This is not quite a Tertullian credo quia absurdum est, but it surely becomes belief in the absence of knowledge of any conclusive order. Such a position was denounced, for the most part, by Roman Catholics though not before a few ardent believers flirted with the idea. However, the Catholics who derived their inspiration from Aquinas found the position repugnant from the first. The Cambridge Platonists, too, were extraordinarily eloquent and in many ways effective in combatting skepticism and in restoring faith to its - for them congenial partner, reason. Milton's position in the continuing debates was on the side of the Cambridge Platonists in employing reason in religious matters. His position was that human reason was effective not only in natural affairs, or in religious affairs, but in any affairs of interest to the human mind. This position tended to distinguish him very plainly from the skeptics and the fideists as well. And his insistence that faith must be added to reason helped keep him distinct from the Socinians, whose position was not attractive to him. Milton's prose gives ample evidence of his awareness of the turmoil in theories of knowledge in his own day. His Art of Logic ranks him as one concerned enough about reason to have confidence in the value of its study. 3 And apart from the numerous references to reason and its effectiveness in the minor prose works, the most significant work which gives evidence of Milton's attitude toward reason in religious matters is his De Doctrina Christiana.4 3

Milton's Artis Logicae Plenior Institution a Ramist logic, was published in 1672, but it was probably composed when he was teaching in the early 1640's. Logic was often referred to as the art of reason or witcraft, and one frequent definition of the term found in the logics is "ars bene ratiocinandi", the art of reasoning well. More will be said of this work and its implications in the chapter on logic. 4 Milton's Christian Doctrine was published at Cambridge in 1825 after a

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MILTON, REASON, AND FAITH

An interesting feature of the Christian Doctrine is that it advertises itself as relying wholly on Scripture for its authority. Thus it seems to take a view that reason is by and large inadequate for penetrating religious mysteries and that the only reliable source of knowledge is God's revelation through His Scripture. Milton, sounding like a good Puritan, says at one point, "Let us then discard reason in sacred matters, and follow the doctrine of Holy Scripture exclusively."5 However, when Milton says this he is in the process of developing his heterodox views on the Trinity. Since his views differ strongly from tradition, which he felt established the concept more on the basis of reason or authority than on the basis of Scriptural evidence, he finds it convenient to disavow reason and concentrate on texts which emphatically proclaim the Father as the one true God. We must keep in mind, though, the fact that Milton praised reason earlier in the work and declared that "The gift of reason has been implanted in all."6 He knew it was a gift to be used. Ordinarily, we must keep in mind, as well, that Milton aligns Scripture with reason, and usually Scripture is to be preferred though not mindlessly. On the matter of the Trinity he shows something of the general character of Christian Doctrine: It seems exceedingly unreasonable, not to say dangerous, that in a matter of s o m u c h difficulty, believers should be required to receive a doctrine, represented by its advocates as of primary importance and of undoubted certainty, or anything less than the clearest testimony of Scripture; and that a point which is confessedly contrary t o h u m a n reason, should

strange pre-publication history which includes suppression by the press of Elzevir because of its heterodoxy - particularly in relation to Milton's antiTrinitarian views. The most reliable sources offer a likely date of composition as the early years of the Restoration, thus putting it close enough to Paradise Lost to make the theology of the two works of the same period. See Maurice Kelley, This Great Argument: a Study of Milton's "De Doctrina Christiana" as a Gloss Upon "Paradise Lost" (Princeton, 1941), and Arthur Sewell, A Study in Milton's Christian Doctrine (London, 1939). 5 John Milton, Christian Doctrine, I, v, in The Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Frank A. Patterson, 18 vols, in 21 (New York, 1931-1942), XIV, 197. Hereafter references to the Christian Doctrine will be by book and chapter, then by volume and page in this edition: designated Columbia Edition. 6 Milton, Christian Doctrine, I, iv; Columbia Edition, XIV, 131.

MILTON, REASON, AND FAITH

19

nevertheless be considered as susceptible of proof from human reason only, or rather from doubtful and obscure disputations.7 What is being recommended here is a coalition of reason and Scripture, with the suggestion that in any significant question both authorities should be fully satisfied. More important than such specific textual references, which could be multiplied into an enormous battery of examples, is the fact that the work is filled with many examples of reason in action. Milton spends a great amount of energy in such things as grammatical analysis, etymological analysis, and the questioning of the validity of Biblical texts. And - what is just as interesting - the work on close examination reveals a logical structure which is extraordinarily Ramist in character. One example of this is the concern he has with the typical logical problems of causality and necessity - an emphasis which is not exclusively, but which is particularly, Ramist. The following study of causes is not usual in this work: The expressions "to be of the Father," and "to be by the Son," do not denote the same kind of efficient cause. If it be not the same cause, neither is it a joint cause; and if not a joint cause, certainly the Father, of whom are all things, must be the principal cause, rather than the Son by whom are all things; for the Father is not only he "of" whom, but also from whom, and for whom, and through whom, and on account of whom are all things, as has been proved above, inasmuch as he comprehends within himself all lesser causes; whereas the Son is only he by whom are all things; wherefore he is the less principal cause.8 The final word on this passage is pronounced a few pages later: "God the Father is the primary and efficient cause of all things." 9 These passages may not be noticeably more Ramistic than Aristotelian, but they are evidence of the logical - in the technical sense of the word - nature of Milton's inquiry. One noticeable Ramist feature of the work is Milton's habit of dichotomizing, a technique which analyzed a subject by finding a starting point, dividing it into two subjects, each of which was divi7 8 9

Milton, Christian Doctrine, I, vi; Columbia Edition, XIV, 379-381. Milton, Christian Doctrine, I, i; Columbia Edition, XV, 9. Milton, Christian Doctrine, I, i; Columbia Edition, XV, 15-16.

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ded into two subjects, on to the end of the analysis. 10 For example, Christian Doctrine is divided into two books: Faith, or the knowledge of God; and Love, or the worship of God. Further dialectical breakdown follows from this in such things as the division of God's decrees into special and general, His efficiency as internal or external, and many more such examples. Such dichotomization is characteristic of this work, just as it is of the Art of Logic though it is not a particularly noticeable feature of other works by Milton. One reason for the extreme logical character of Christian Doctrine is the fact that Milton relied heavily on William Ames's Marrow of Sacred Divinity,n Ames was himself a Ramist and the author of a logic. In his preface to Marrow he says: Some also there will be, who will condemne the care of Method, and Logicall form as curious and troublesom. But to them a sounder judgement is to be wished, because they remove the art of understanding, judgment, and memory from these things, which doe almost onely deserve to bee understood, known, and committed to memory. His entire treatise is "Logicall" in form, more than Milton's, to the point that it could be said Ames actually wrote a logic of divinity. Perhaps the most striking Ramist detail is the fact that Ames precedes his text with twenty-five pages of Ramist charts, with the normal Ramist dichotomizations, outlining his entire work, thereby providing a convenient method for memorizing the main and minor points. This verifies Frances Yate's contention that "there can be no doubt that an art of memory based on imageless dialectical order as the true natural order of the mind goes well with Calvinist 10 This point will be developed with much more detail and example in later chapters. See Walter J. Ong, S. J., Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), and Frances Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago, 1966), 231-242. 11 The two works mentioned by Arthur Sewell as being most influential on Milton in the composition of Christian Doctrine are Wollebius' The Abridgement of Christian Divinity (London, 1650) and William Ames's Marrow of Sacred Divinity, first published in Latin in Francken, Friesland, in 1623, then translated at the order, apparently, of the House of Commons in 1642. See the Columbia Edition, XVII, 575, n. 3, and see Christian Doctrine, II, vii; Columbia Edition, XVII, 173, for a reference to Ames in the text. Milton also refers to Ames and Wollebius in a letter to Phillips. His notices of them are always favorable. Marrow is now available in a new translation by John Dykstra Eusden (Boston and Philadelphia, 1968) with a full introduction.

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12

theology." Milton did not seem particularly concerned with the problem of memory (he composed no charts) but he may have felt that the technique of dichotomies was something of a key to the natural order of the mind. In the prose, at any rate, Milton seems to align himself fairly plainly on the side of reason in matters of religion. But he was not Socinian enough to suggest that reason alone was sufficient however necessary it may have been - to know the deepest religious truths. He must have known a good deal about the scuffling and controversy in matters of knowledge in his day, from the fideists and skeptics to the Socinians and scholastics. His reading in the classics must have prepared him to see through the surfaces of contemporary controversies to the original depths, the Greek and Roman sources. Such a background would have helped him avoid jumping to a conclusion or being gulled into thinking that what was old was really new. It would have helped, too, in his developing his own universal epistemological view - which is to say the epistemology which underlies his great epic. Now it seems inevitable that problems of knowledge would have figured largely in Paradise Lost. As a Christian epic focusing on the interdiction against a specific kind of knowledge, it demands that attention be paid to what the characters know and how they know it. The interdiction also makes us aware of what the characters should not aspire to know. The epic convention demanding that the poet display an unusually rich store of knowledge would make the normal epic swell with information. But in the Christian epic such knowledge must have some relevance to God's will and His plan. The Christian epic must somehow account not only for forbidden knowledge but also for such things as the knowledge of the self which the soul needs before it can truly seek salvation. It must account for the knowledge of God Himself, for the knowledge that grace confers, the knowledge of revelation, the uses of reason, and the uses of science. Ultimately it must deal with the meaning of sensory experience, the most difficult problem of all. The Christian epic must treat ultimate truths and this implies a theory of knowledge which can accommodate God. 12

Yates, The Art of Memory,

237.

II SELF-KNOWLEDGE IN PARADISE LOST: CONSCIENCE AND CONTEMPLATION

The Delphic Oracle declared the starting point of all wisdom to be self knowledge. The man who truly knows himself is capable of going on to know what else he may wish, but his knowledge can be nothing but vain if he has not that first competence. And though this may sound particularly appropriate for the Greek concept, the maxim was adopted by the Christians and put to a most godly purpose. Augustine recommends the advice as in keeping with Christianity: Men are wont to set a high value on the knowledge of earthly and celestial things. But they are certainly better who prefer the knowledge of themselves to this knowledge; and a mind to which even its own weakness is known, is more deserving of praise than one which, knowing nothing of this, searches out the courses of the stars in order to learn to know them, or to retain the knowledge of them it has already acquired, but is itself ignorant of the course by which it must proceed to reach its own true health and strength.1 Augustine, like Descartes, though surely not to the same ends, advises that one can hardly doubt the processes of his own thought, or at least that he is doubting. And while he is not necessarily recommending in the passage above that one should take pains to define the nature of cognition or consciousness before going on to examine other things, it is surely true that Augustine is telling us to examine that which is close at hand before we pass on to that which is far away. 1 Augustine, The Trinity, IV, pref.; (Washington, D.C., 1963) tr. Stephen McKenna C. SS. R., 129. The entirety of this preface is useful to consult though too lengthy to quote here.

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The process of self-knowledge is complex but nevertheless intuitive. When it is said to the mind: 'Know thyself,' it knows itself at the very instant in which it understands the word 'thyself'; and it knows itself for no other reason than that it is present to itself.2 As Augustine points out, it is not as if the mind were absent from itself or that it had to examine itself in something else, as in a mirror (an interesting point for what follows), but the mind apprehends itself directly since it is itself. Hence self-knowledge is complex but most natural. Augustine's discussion continues in Book X, Chapter 10, with something of the psychological complexity we would associate with Aristotle's De Anima. John Calvin links the concept of self-knowledge with its specifically Christian purposes better for us than does Augustine, and without the psychological subtleties of Augustine. Calvin is not particularly interested in how one goes about knowing himself, nor whether it is the mind which knows itself. Rather he is concerned, as the oracle was, and as most Christians were, with the precedence of knowledge: Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes, and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone.3 This establishes the significance of self-knowledge for the Christian - what the Christian can expect to gain from knowing himself and what the relationship is between self-knowledge and knowledge of God. The connection is so close that Calvin can hardly be sure how to assign precedence. The Christian (and the non-Christian as well, 2

Augustine, The Trinity, X, ix; tr. McKenna, 306. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I, i; tr. Henry Beveridge, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1962), I, 37. See also Albert W. Fields, "Milton and Self-Knowledge", PMLA 83(1968), 392-399, particularly 393. 3

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we may presume from the way Calvin puts it) will, upon coming to an understanding of his own nature, very shortly come to an understanding of his limitations, his weaknesses, his failings - in short his character. He will then see himself not as self-created nor as self-sustaining, but as a creature of God and dependent on His grace. As Calvin says, "Every person, therefore, on coming to the knowledge of himself is not only urged to see God, but is also led as by the hand to find him." But the process is not finished with this. We must know ourselves and continue that knowledge to God, but "it is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he have previously contemplated the face of God and come down after such contemplation to look into himself." This closely following passage makes clear that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of oneself are coordinated knowledges. Implied in the neglect of one is the neglect of the other. Much later in the Institutes Calvin treats the subject more plainly. He begins to sound something like Augustine when he says, It was not without reason that the ancient proverb so strongly recommended to man the knowledge of himself. For if it is deemed disgraceful to be ignorant of things pertaining to the business of life, much more disgraceful is self-ignorance, in consequence of which we miserably deceive ourselves in matters of the highest moment, and so walk blindfold.4 This, then, puts it on a less theological level, though not on an amoral level. Self-deceit becomes one of the most significant of moral questions, since self-knowledge must not only precede other forms of knowledge - specifically in that it must precede natural knowledge - but it must also be achieved as one of the prime means of leading us to God. As should be expected, numerous figures have commented upon the concept of self-knowledge. Even the skeptics had much to say. Father Pierre Charron, for instance, says, The most excellent and divine counsell, the best and most profitale [sic] advertisement of all others, but the least practised, is to study and learne how to know our selves: This is the foundation of Wisdome and the high way to what soever is good; e there is no folly comparable to this, To be 4

Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, II, i, 1; tr. Beveridge, I, 210.

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painful and diligent to know all things els whatsoever rather than our selves: For the true science and studie of man, is man himselfe.5 Perhaps Father Charron's thrust is something less than the Christian vision Calvin foresees. And while it is certainly true that Father Charron's limits are suggested to him by Montaigne, the implications of his statement seem almost Baconian. Charron tends to delimit the study of man to man, thus emphasizing the role of science and disconnecting it from the responsibility of leading us to God. As Bacon puts it in The Advancement, IV, "This knowledge [of ourselves] is for man the end and term of knowledges." 6 With Bacon, and perhaps by implication with Charron, self-knowledge is the beginning and the ending point, but for more standard Christian thought it was only the beginning. Much more general in attitude was John Davies and his well known poem, Nosce Teipsum (London, 1599). The implication of the poem is present in its title and expressed in the poetry itself, with such lines as, " M y selfe am Center of my circling thought, / Onely my selfe I studie, learne, and know.'"1 But this first section is calculated to show the limits of human knowledge, "What can we know? or what can we discerne? / When Error chokes the windowes of the mind;" 8 and as we see, the limits implied by the choked "windowes", the senses, are rather definite. Added to the fact that the senses are choked, we discover that Davies looks back, as Calvin and others have done, to the golden age when Adam's senses were intact: "when their reasons eye was sharpe and cleere, / And (as an Eagle can behold the Sunne,) / Could have approch't th' eternall light as neere, / As th' intellectuall Angels could have done." 9 The bulk of Davies' poems deals with problems such as Aristotle himself contemplated in his psychology. Hardly a problem of significance in the realm of knowledge is ignored, though none of the vision he brings to bear on them is very original. He agrees, ulti5

Father Pierre Charron, Of Wisedome, Three Bookes, tr. Samuel Lennard (London, 1612), 1. 6 Francis Bacon, Works, ed. Spedding, Ellis, Heath, 14 vols. (Boston, 1863), IX, 14. 7 John Davies, "Of Humane Knowledge", 8. 8 Davies, "Of Humane Knowledge", 4. 9 Davies, "Of Humane Knowledge", 1.

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mately, with much of Aristotle - particularly concerning the senses: "And as from Senses Reasons worke doth spring, / So manie Reasons understanding gaine, / and manie understandings, knowledge bring; / and by much knowledge, wisdome we obtaine." 10 But the popular William Fenner, William Ames's tutor, treats a concept related to self-knowledge which is deep in the Christian strain, the concept of conscience. In his The Souls Looking-glasse (Cambridge, 1640), Fenner puts things so directly that we can gain a quick and useful understanding of his concept of conscience just by looking at a few of his comments. He says, for example, that every person has a conscience: "I say, of every man: For Angels and devils have a conscience, too." 11 Milton, as we shall see, agrees with this judgment. The nature of conscience is developed for the popular understanding by Fenner, and as we would expect in such a treatise the emphasis is eventually placed upon the regeneration of those fallen souls who would desire salvation. Fenner tells us how we get conscience, how we may see the office of conscience, what the troubled conscience will do for us, and what things are necessary to a soundly renewed conscience.12 But more immediately of interest is his heading to one of his propositions: "The Light that conscience acteth by is knowledge." He continues, "This knowledge is twofold; 1. Of God's law, 2. Of our selves."13 Knowledge of our selves: This also is the light that conscience acteth by. There is in everyman some measure of knowledge of himself according to the measure of knowledge that he hath of Gods law. Our consciences look backward and forward; forward to Gods law, and backward on our selves. Whether we be such as Gods law requireth, yea or no.14 What is ultimately said here is that conscience functions to help us see ourselves in relation to God's law and that, concomitantly, we 10 Davies, Nosce Teipsum, 50, "Of the Soule of Man, and the immortalitie thereof". 11 William Fenner, The Souls Looking-glasse (Cambridge, 1640), 31. See also William Perkins, A Discourse of Conscience, in Works (London, 1612), 1,517: "...the proper subjects of conscience are reasonable creatures, that is, men and Angels." 12 Fenner, The Souls Looking-glasse, 90,115,177, 251. 18 Fenner, The Souls Looking-glasse, 41. 14 Fenner, The Souls Looking-glasse, 42-43.

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are aided to see ourselves through God's law. This may be one reason why in the Garden Adam and Eve are so clearly told what the nature of God's law is. God is throughout Paradise Lost extraordinarily clear about what His law is and why it should be obeyed. Fenner is saying - as Paradise Lost says in a way too - that ignorance of the law might be an excuse. The knowledge of the law helps up know more than just the law: it makes conscience a functioning guide. "First, the knowledge of Gods law is necessary. For else conscience cannot work." 15 Like most of his contemporaries Milton was well aware of the importance of knowing oneself. Albert Fields, in his recent article, surveys both the classical references to self-knowledge and Milton's own relatively infrequent specific references. Fields suggests that Milton's "notion of self-knowledge pervades the thought of much of his prose and perhaps serves as an ordering motif in his longer poetic works." He also says, "Knowledge of self might be achieved by introspection or by one's viewing himself mirrored in the world's stage." 16 These two ways of achieving self-knowledge - considering the concepts of conscience we have already discussed - are significant in relation to what is to follow. In the first books of Paradise Lost Satan gives some evidence of the failure of self-knowledge. His understanding of the nature of God's law is in itself characteristically distorted by his thought. He blames, for example, God for his own condition when he delivers his long soliloquy at the beginning of Book IV, a soliloquy in which it at first seems that he does indeed understand who he is: 0 Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams That bring to my remembrance from what state 1 fell, how glorious once above thy Spheare; Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down Warring in Heav'n against Heav'ns matchless King: A h wherefore? he deservd no such return From mee, whom he created what I was 15

Fenner, The Souls Looking-glasse, 43. However, see Perkins, Works, I, 519, "...whether we know gods lawes or know them not, they still binde us." Milton would probably agree with Perkins' view, but he takes very great pains to see that God's law is known in Paradise Lost. 18 Fields, "Milton and Self-Knowledge", 392.

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In that bright eminence, and with his good Upbraided none; nor was his service hard. What could be less then to afford him praise, The easiest recompence, and pay him thanks, How due! yet all his good prov'd ill in me, And wrought but malice; lifted up so high I sdeind subjection, and thought one step higher Would set me highest, and in a moment quit The debt immense of endless gratitude, So burdensom, still paying, still to ow; Forgetful what from him I still receivd, And understood not that a grateful mind By owing owes not, but still pays, at once Indebted and discharg'd; what burden then? O had his powerful Destiny ordaind Mee some inferiour Angel, I had stood Then happie; no unbounded hope had rais'd Ambition. 1 7

Satan fully understood the nature of God's goodness and the "bright eminence" that had been Satan's own created self. God's service, in all its ease, and the gratitude he should have felt in all its enormonsness, were very plain to him. Satan tells us directly that he knows God and that he knows himself, but the fact is that in the last few lines he belies his own statements. He tells us one thing but shows us that he in truth understands quite the opposite. In blaming God for Satan's own failure to be grateful, for his failure to serve, for his inability to afford submission (obedience to God is a most significant expression of love for God) Satan demonstrates clearly his misunderstanding. Satan "sdeind subjection" by the force of his own will, but his own will - though God made it free as He did in all His creatures - is no longer free: it is a will in "subjection". Thus it is ironic when Satan says of Hell, "Here at least / We shall be free" (I, 258-259). Satan is not free: Abdiel is right in saying, "Thy self not free, but to thy self enthralld" (VI, 180). He is constantly subject to one or another passion, as for example when he is standing on top of Mount Niphates once 17 John Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 37-61, in The Poetical Works, ed. Helen Darbishire, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1952). All references hereafter will be to this edition by book and line.

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he has left Uriel and "Now conscience wakes despair / That slumberd, wakes the bitter memorie / Of what he was" (IV, 23-25). And as "each passion dimmd his face" (IV, 114) his genuine evil character becomes evident beneath the masquerade of the cherub he has put on to deceive Uriel. His passions enchain him, "Disdain" and "necessitie, / The Tyrants plea" drive him relentlessly through the poem. When he melts at Adam's and Eve's "harmless innocence" "yet public reason just, / Honour and Empire with revenge enlarg'd, / By conquering this new World, compells me no w / To do what else though damnd I should abhorre" (IV, 388-392). It is necessity, the avowed necessity of revenge, that drives him. Rather than being in command of himself, he is commanded - a slave. One is tempted to suppose that in those scenes in which Satan seems to soften momentarily, in which he searches for the reasons to do what, except that he were damned he would not do, his conscience has awakened not only despair, but doubt as well, as when "horror and doubt distract / His troubl'd thoughts, and from the bottom stirr I The Hell within him" (IV, 18-20). Milton is more overt than this, however, in letting us see that Satan is not always certain exactly who he is. For example, when he meets and fails to recognize his offspring, Sin, at the gates of Hell he says indignantly, "Retire, or taste thy folly, and learn by proof, I Hell-born, not to contend with Spirits of Heav'n" (II, 686-687). Satan is no longer a Spirit of Heaven, but is in point of fact the spirit responsible for Hell's existence; if one is to be considered Hell-born, then it must be Satan, despite his actual origins. When Zephon and Ithuriel explode Satan "Squat like a Toad, close at the eare of Eve", their first question is "Which of those rebel Spirits adjug'd to Hell / Com'st thou, escap't thy prison; and transformd, I Why satst thou like an enemie in waite / Here watching at the head of these that sleep?" (IV, 822-826). Zephon and Ithuriel do not recognize Satan, once their superior in the angelic hierarchy. And in a marvel of ironic misunderstanding, Satan replies, "Know ye not mee? ye knew me once no mate / For you, there sitting where ye durst not soare; / Not to know mee argues your selves unknown" (827-829). What Satan does not know is the extent to which his physical appearance has altered dramatically since his fall;

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he is no longer the "bright eminence" but is tarnished and dimmed virually beyond recognition. At first glance this may seem a relatively insignificant detail however much it may demonstrate Satan's disadvantage when he is confronted by angels of God. But the fact is that Satan's failure to recognize the change which has taken place in his appearance means that he is unaware of the change which has taken place inwardly. In Heaven before the rebellion, appearance conforms strictly to reality. The angels are physically beautiful because they are beautiful in essence. After the rebellion, the same direct correspondence is seen in Hell. Satan acknowledges the external alteration in his appearance, but is unable to recognize the inward change that it represents. (1,94-97).. .Satan never does accept the fact that appearance is reality, despite being told this directly.18 Raymond Waddington quotes IV, 835-840, in which Zephon tells Satan he "resembl'st now / Thy sin and place of doom obscure and foule." Thus Satan gives us sufficient evidence that while he is accusing the angels of failing at self-knowledge it is, in fact, himself who is most lacking. Satan does not accept the fact that he is inwardly changed when confronted by Zephon, and he does not accept the fact that his power is limited - as is the power of all creatures - by the will of God. After threatening - with idle bravado - Zephon and Ithuriel with violence he sees Gabriel, possessing "in Heav'n th'esteem of wise" (886), who tells him his power is limited, that in fact both of them are limited: "Satan, I know thy strength, and thou knowst mine, / Neither our own but giv'n; what follie then / To boast what Arms can doe, since thine no more / Then Heav'n permits, nor mine" (1006-1009). Satan does not believe Gabriel, who has already proven his wisdom by blasting Satan's claim that he was loose from Hell because he dared "To wing the desolate Abyss" (936). Gabriel expresses angelic disdain, "To say and strait unsay, pretending first I Wise to flie pain, professing next the Spie, / Argues no Leader, but a lyar trac't" (947-949). But Satan, persisting in his course, still unaware of the significance of what has transpired, 18

Raymond B. Waddington, "Appearance and Reality in Satan's Disguises", Texas Studies in Languages and Literature 4 (1962), 390.

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squares off against Gabriel only to have Gabriel, virtually exasperated, demand that Satan look aloft "And read thy Lot in yon celestial Sign / Where thou art weighd, and shown how light, how weak, I If thou resist. The Fiend lookd up and knew / His mounted scale aloft: nor more; but fled / Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night" (1011-1015). Satan must have outright sensory "proof" - since he will not trust the testimony of the wisest of angels in matters relevant to his own nature any more than he will trust the word of God - and he sees, finally, what for him is proof: the scale of Libra in the Crystalline Sphere palpably demonstrating to him that he is unable to defeat his adversary. This palpable proof, expressive of an almost Hobbesian faith in direct sensory evidence, finally makes the points that the three angels in the Garden had been trying so long to make: Satan is no longer the vast power he once was and still imagines himself to be. No one could expect him to believe, even at this point in the poem, but he most assuredly acts to avoid further pain. And when we think of Calvin's comment that self-knowledge implies knowledge of God since none of us can consider ourselves without realizing that we are creatures of God, we recall that long before the action narrated in Book IV, during the very first "consult" in the vast north, Satan gave convincing evidence that he was lacking in self-knowledge. In reply to Abdiel, who challenges Satan by reminding him that "As by his Word the mighty Father made / All things, ev'n thee" (V, 836-837), Satan says, That we were formd then saist thou? and the work Of secondarie hands, by task transferrd From Father to his Son? strange point and new! Doctrin which we would know whence learnt: who saw When this creation was? rememberst thou Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being? We know no time when we were not as now; Know none before us, self-begot, self-rais'd By our own quick'ning power...(V, 853-861).

By Calvin's estimate, then, Satan, in assuming himself self-generated, displays the most thorough form of failure of self-knowledge. By contrast, Adam, before the fall, gives evidence of possessing a very certain self-knowledge. In his late conversation with Raphael

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Adam recounts the story of his creation from his own point of view, demonstrating conclusively that his first impulses toward knowing himself drew him toward heaven. From the first, Adam's self-knowledge is intact and sound: For Man to tell how human Life began Is hard; for who himself beginning knew? Desire with thee still longer to converse Induc'd me. As new wak't from soundest sleep Soft on the flourie herb I found me laid In Balmie Sweat, which with his Beames the Sun Soon dri'd, and on the reaking moisture fed. Strait toward Heav'n my wondring Eyes I turnd, And gaz'd a while the ample Skie, till rais'd By quick instinctive motion up I sprung, . . .Thou Sun, said I, faire Light, Tell, if ye saw, how came I thus, how here? Not of my self; by some great Maker then, In goodness and in power praeeminent; Tell me, how may I know him, how adore, From whom I have that thus I move and live, And feel that I am happier then I know. (VIII, 250-282) Contemplation of himself leads his eyes and his thoughts upward, toward first the sun, in the natural world in which he lives, thence to God, his "Maker", whom he seeks to offer his gratitude for life. God Himself, of course, had earlier explained His purposes in creating man, and He explained, too, what qualities man would possess: . . .a Creature who not prone And Brute as Other Creatures, but endu'd With Sanctitie of Reason, might erect His Stature, and upright with Front serene Govern the rest, self-knowing, and from thence Magnanimous to correspond with Heav'n, But grateful to acknowledge when his good Descends, thither with heart and voice and eyes Directed in Devotion. (VII, 506-514) Adam, then, was created "self-knowing", and finds his first impulses directed toward giving thanks.

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But the situation with Eve is by no means as clear. If anything there is some question as to whether or not she was included in God's description of man, as he is explained to Christ by the Father in the passage above. One would normally expect that Eve, like Adam, would be created fully self-knowing, but this is not unquestionably the case. In the celebrated passage in Book IV in which Eve describes her first waking moments we see that there are some similarities, but some even more crucial dissimilarities between their experiences: That day I oft remember, when from sleep I first awak'd, and found my self repos'd Under a shade on flours, much wondring where And what I was, whence thither brought, and how. (449-452) Like Adam, she wonders who she is and where she is. But instead of looking upward as Adam had done, she turns her eye downward looking eventually not at the sun, nor seeking God, but looking at herself and remaining unaware of who she is. As we see, her ear led her to this pass by informing her of the murmuring of the waters: Not distant farr from thence a murmuring sound Of waters issu'd from a Cave and spred Into a liquid Plain, then stood unmov'd Pure as th' expanse of Heav'n; I thither went With unexperienc't thought, and laid me downe On the green bank, to look into the cleer Smooth Lake, that to me seemd another Skie. (453-459) Thus her ear, Aristotle's principal source of wisdom, leads her to the pool, which deceives her on two counts: first in its appearance as a body of land, "a liquid Plain", a deception of no real significance; and then second, by seeming "another Skie". Whereas Adam looks toward the genuine sky, Eve is led to look toward a surrogate sky, one which returns to her an image which she does not understand. This second deception is more serious. Ultimately it has deep consequences in that Eve's fascination with her own image produces in her a "vain desire" like that of Narcissus' selfworship. Much of this passage is proleptic. Eve's ear leads her to the pool, just as Eve's ear leads her to consider the Serpent's situation and argument in Book IX; Eve is deceived in what she sees just

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as she is deceived in Book IX in that what she sees is not a mere serpent. And yet this is not a fall or even a "pre-fall". There is no sin involved here, no genuine fault. What the passage demonstrates is that a greater trust of "outsides" can lead to deception - at first perhaps innocent but eventually of a serious and grave consequence. Even in this Paradisal scene there are implications which should be disturbing in character. As the passage continues: As I bent down to look, just opposite, A Shape within the watry gleam appeerd Bending to look on me, I started back, It started back, but pleasd I soon returnd, Pleasd it returnd as soon with answering looks Of sympathie and love; there I had fixt Mine eyes till now, and pin'd with vain desire, Had not a voice thus warnd me, What thou seest, What there thou seest fair Creature is thy self, With thee it came and goes: but follow me, And I will bring thee where no shadow staies Thy coming, and thy soft imbraces, hee Whose image thou art, him thou shalt enjoy Inseparablie thine... (IV, 460-473) What Eve sees in the water is a figure of "sympathie and love", a figure which naturally attracts her. Her reaction demonstrates how "faire" and "winning soft" she is, and it may well be innocent folly that she should be so deeply taken by her own image. If in fact she were not deceived to such terrible purpose later, this passage would indeed be innocuous and amusing - an indication perhaps of nothing more than the differences between Adam as a man and Eve as a woman. Yet in the context of the poem's total action the passage takes on much more meaning for us. True, it shows the difference in reaction between man and woman, but it also shows concretely the approaches by which Eve is likely to be tempted. We see, in other words, that she is vulnerable and we see exactly the character of her vulnerability. Further we see - again proleptically - the weakness that man in general has for beauty. It is for love of Eve that Adam falls: though it must be remembered that his fall is significantly differentin character fromhers. Atanyrate weseeinthe passage above that it is a voice (and therefore Eve's receptive ear) which finally leads her to the right path and toward knowledge of

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the nature of man. She is to see herself in relation to Adam, thus gaining self-knowledge. Milton is in agreement with Aristotle in admitting that the senses, while subject to deception and while surely no reliable ends in themselves, can produce knowledge of a desirable and verifiable kind. However, the uncertainty which this entire passage develops about the trustworthiness of the senses and the conclusions which can be drawn from them ought to serve as a warning for all the poem to come. The voice of God (Adam's account of this scene in Book VIII, 485f. identifies it, while giving a substantially different view of Eve's creation and the events which follow) leads Eve to Adam, apparently expecting that the mere sight of Adam will clarify her situation for her. She explains that she saw him, fair and tall, under a platan, but she thought that Adam was "less faire, / Less winning soft, less amiablie milde, / Then that smooth watry image" and when she returns to find that image Adam calls out, explaining to her that "to give thee being I lent / Out of my side to thee, neerest my heart / Substantial Life . . . Part of my Soul I seek thee", he tells her, not expecting gratitude from her (and surely not getting it either), but expecting only that she would see her true situation as his helpmeet. But seeing Adam is not enough. Hearing him reason with her is not enough. The fact that her life came from his is not enough. It is not until Adam's "gentle hand / Seisd mine" that she "yielded, and from that time see / How beauty is excelld by manly grace / And wisdom, which alone is truly fair". Force, however gentle, and coercion, keeping her from her desired returning to the pool, are necessary for Eve to begin to come to awareness of herself. This contrasts sharply with Adam's "instinctive" understanding. The mirror imagery in this passage is, as we have already seen, very powerful and pronounced. When Eve sees herself the lines themselves echo the mirroring: "As I bent down to look" "A Shape . . . Bending to look on me, I started back, / It started back, but pleasd I soon returnd, / Pleasd it returnd". Nature mirrors itself later in Eve's speech, even after she accepts Adam as her "Author and Disposer" (635), which must be taken to mean that she sees in the law something of her own character: "so God ordains, / God

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is thy Law, thou mine: to know no more / Is Woman's happiest knowledge and her praise" (636-638). Nature mirroring is again present in the remarkable passage in which Eve explains what it is that she is willing to give up for Adam (we remember that she already gave up the image in the pool for him, and reluctantly): With thee conversing I forget all time, All seasons and thir change, all please alike. Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest Birds; pleasant the Sun When first on this delightful Land he spreads His orient Beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flour, Glistring with dew; fragrant the fertil earth After soft showers; and sweet the coming on Of grateful Eevning milde, then silent Night With this her solemn Bird and this fair Moon, And these the Gemms of Heav'n, her starrie train: But neither breath of Morn when she ascends ^mirroring With charm of earliest Birds, nor rising Sun begins On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, floure, here Glistring with dew, nor fragrance after showers, Nor grateful Eevning milde, nor silent Night With this her solemn Bird, nor walk by Moon, Or glittering Starr-light without thee is sweet. (639-656) This passage is extraordinarily powerful, if only as a paean to nature and its beauties, which of course should rightfully be appreciated. But the duplication, which can be interpreted as a mirroring, is so pronounced and it is so reminiscent of (as well as proximate to) the poolside passage that we are led to link them and to conclude that Eve, now fully experienced - as she was to a lesser degree when she saw and rejected Adam - is no longer tempted to reject him in favor of what else she may see. But in refusing to reject him, in admitting that truly the world without him would be joyless and bitter, her language helps us see how really powerful the world of physical and natural beauty is for her. The higher knowledge of Adam interests her, too, as her question about the stars which follows immediately should indicate: she loves to hear him discourse on nature. But we are sorely tempted to feel that the passages quoted are, for the informed reader, suggestive of an instinctive (the word may be too strong) appreciation of nature's

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surfaces which Eve's experienced mind modifies, but which it does not entirely renounce. But of course we know Christian tradition admits that an appreciation of nature can aid in coming closer to God. One of the reasons for that may well be that if nature is somehow a reflection of God, then we may, by examining ourselves by its light, come to understand more about God and thereby more about ourselves. This may or may not be part of the inspiration for a lesser-known but imaginatively vital mirroring tradition which could possibly help us see Eve's situation at the pool more clearly than we have done. This tradition is represented by William Fenner's The Souls Looking-Glasse (London, 1640).19 In the light of Fenner and others to be mentioned, however, one begins to wonder if there is more at work in this passage than the comparison with Narcissus. The problem of the soul's coming to have self-knowledge is a crucial one, despite Augustine's assurance that such self-knowledge is so immediate a perception of the soul by itself that no mirror is necessary. Numerous subsequent commentators, particularly of Milton's time, have suggested that a mirror of some kind - most often a natural mirror, as a pool - is of considerable advantage in the soul's coming to know itself. For example, Book III of John Frith's Vox Piscis: or the Book-Fish (London, 1626) is titled "A Mirrour or Glasse to know thy selfe", and it begins, The Philosophers to whom God had inspired certain sparkles of truth, acknowledged that the chiefe point of wisdome and direction of a mans life was to know himselfe, which sentence the Scripture establisheth so cleerely, that no man may dissent from the truth of the same. For Salomon saith, that the feare of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Now who can feare the Lord, but onely he that knoweth himselfe, as the Scripture teacheth him? [pp. 1-2] 19

This tradition, of the soul examining itself in a "glass" or mirror, is not mentioned by editors such as John Shawcross, Merrit Y. Hughes, Helen Darbishire, or Douglas Bush. The passage in question (458ff.) is glossed ordinarily with a reference to Ovid, Metamorphosis III, 402f. Bush's gloss is the latest and most thorough: "Eve's behaving like Narcissus (Ovid, Met. 3.407f.), while natural and blameless, gives a first faint hint of potential vanity and selfcenteredness. Also in Christian tradition, some of the newly created angels looked up to God, others fell in love with themselves; cf. Donne, Sermons, ed. Potter and Simpson, 3, 254." This note appears in John Milton, The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Douglas Bush (Boston, 1965), 286.

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Thus, for Frith self-knowledge has much the same implication that we have seen for other commentators, and he adds that some kind of mirror can be helpful to self-knowledge. Henry More, one of the Cambridge Platonists, in his poem Psychozoia, has a significantly complex view of the soul examining its reflection in the world at large. He sees the soul as developing a means by which to see through the world of appearances, in a way that Narcissus does not. The conception he offers is particularly interesting in view of the fact that Eve, in contemplating herself, does not develop that greater skill: 9 This is that ancient Eidos omniform "form or beauty" Fount of all beauty, root of lowring glee. [More] Hyle old hag, foul, filthy and deform, "materia prima" Can not come near. Joyfull Eternity Admits no change or mutability, No shade of change, no imminution, No nor increase; for what increase can be To that that's all? and where Hyl' hath no throne Can ought decay? Such is the state of great Aeon. 10 Farre otherwise it fares in this same lond Of truth and beauty, then in mortall brood Of earthly lovers, who impassion'd With outward formes (not rightly understood, From whence proceeds this amorous sweet floud, And choise delight which in their spright they feel: Can outward idol yield so heavenly mood?) This inward beauty unto that they deel That little beauteious is: thus into th' dirt they reel. 11 Like to Narcissus, on the grassie shore, Viewing his outward face in watery glasse; Still as he looks, his looks adde evermore New fire, new light, new love, new comely grace To's inward form; and it displayes apace It's hidden rayes, and so new lustre send

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To that vain shadow: but the boy, alas! Unhappy boy! the inward nought attends But in foul filthy mire, love, life and form he blends. 12 And this I wote is the Souls excellence, That from the hint of every painted glance Of shadows sensible, it doth from hence Its radiant life and lovely hue advance To higher pitch, and by good governance May wained be from love of fading light In outward formes, having true cognisance, That those vain shows are not the beauty bright That takes men so, but that they cause in humane spright.20 These stanzas, quoted in their entirety only because More is difficult to understand excerpted, demonstrate a faith in the power of the soul to do that which Narcissus could not do - to see through the surfaces of reality to what lay beneath. The soul, by its nature, sees something like reality, because its insight penetrates the world of sense. As he says in stanza 28 of the same poem, "But well I wote that nothing's bare to sense; / For sense cannot arrive to th' inwardnesse / Of things nor penetrate the crusty fence / Of constipated matter close compresse". Whether Eve's insight penetrates sense or not is a most curious question, one which we would be tempted to answer in the negative particularly if we ask whether she, unaided, would be able to see beneath the surfaces of things. Apparently she would not. She relies ultimately upon the ministering voice of God and the greater wisdom - providing she submits of Adam. Alone, we must assume, she would still like Narcissus be worshipping a glimmering surface. 21 The most recent works to treat the scene have been Dennis Burden's The Logical Epic (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 83f., which 20

Henry More, Psychodia Platonica, I, i; (Cambridge, 1642), 3. An even more dramatic treatment of the soul and its mirroring is in Joseph Beaumont's Psyche (London, 1648). See particularly Canto VI, stanzas 76-78 in the first edition (not Grosart's edition). 21 The most current discussions of this entire scene in Paradise Lost actually do not help us since they point to the alternatives of older scholarship on the one hand, and toward directions which do not concern us on the other.

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sees the passage as preparation for Adam and Eve's "marriage"; and Stanley Eugene Fish's Surprised by Sin (New York, 1967), 216f., which surveys the older discussions of Millicent Bell, Davis P. Harding, A. J. A. Waldock, Joseph Summers, and Northrop Frye. Fish's discussion is thorough and establishes two basic positions: one which assumes the incident indicates the vulnerability of Eve by comparison with Narcissus, and the alternative which sees the incident as innocuous and "childlike". The second position is based on the passage as being a contrast rather than a comparison with Narcissus. A truly remarkable example of the soul's examining itself in hopes of knowing itself may be seen in Peter Sterry's A Discourse of the Freedom of the Will (London, 1675), a fascinating document which has very little to do with free will but which has a great deal to do with the ways of knowledge in the seventeenth century. The document is in agreement, essentially, with the positions outlined by Ralph Cudworth in his A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality,'2''2' particularly in reference to the nature of universals and their validity: "The eternal truths of things in the Divine Mind. . . where they shine immediately immutably, These are the Rock." 23 Of self-contemplation, Sterry says: God then alone most perfectly and substantially enjoyeth Himself in the contemplation of Himself, which is the Beatifical Vision of the most beautiful, the most blessed Essence of Essences. This Act of Contemplation is an Intellectual and Divine Generation, in which the Divine Essence, with an eternity of most heightened Pleasures, eternally bringeth forth it self, within it self, into an Image of it self.24 There is something of the Narcissus itself implied in this passage - implied, that is, in a comparison of God's self-contemplation 22

Ralph Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, (London, 1731), see pp. 223, 231. 23 Peter Sterry, A Discourse of the Freedom of the Will, 15, first of the three parts of wisdom. 24 Sterry, A Discourse of the Freedom of the Will, 48.

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with the self-contemplation of Narcissus. What Sterry is saying is that the kind of contemplation of self which we know in the poolside scene of Eve and in the classical analogue of Narcissus is the prerogative of God. But Sterry had often warned of the dangers of surface and sense. Like a good Platonist, he devoted himself to seeing, or trying to see, beneath the surfaces of things. To this end he developed his own theory of knowledge based on three principles of truth: sense, reason, and spirit: Sense, Prov. 20.12. The seeing eye, and the hearing eare, God hath made them both. God hath made the Senses, standards and judges of Truth, within their own circuit, in such things, as may be seen or heard, as appertain to Sense. Reason, Prov. 20.26. The Spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, searching out the hidden parts of the belly. Though the candle of Reason excell in light the Glow-wormes of sense; yet is it but a candle, not the Sunne it self; it makes not day, only shines in the darknesse of the night. The Spirit, I Cor. 2.11. The things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. The Spirit searcheth out the deep things of God. Divine truths are the depths of things; the rest are only the surface.25

The process, then, from sense to reason to spirit, or from perception of surfaces through judgments toward real knowledge is not only possible for Sterry, but tremendously desirable. It becomes, virtually, a Christian's mission. We see too that in the case of Eve, her knowledge began with perception, broke down with a failure of judgment to make the sensory perception reveal its proper subject, was revived only with the intervention of the Spirit, and then sustained by assuming her proper role next to Adam. His further analysis of the soul - according to the best of the "Philosophers" as he tells us - implies something of the same kind of division of labor. It implies, too, something of the same kind of division of knowledge proper to each aspect of the soul. His four-fold division is: "The Sensitive, Rational, Intellectual, or Angelical, 25

Peter Sterry, The Spirit of Convincing of Sinne (London, 1646), 9, 10. This is a sermon preached to the House of Commons, November 26,1645.

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SELF-KNOWLEDGE IN 'PARADISE LOST'

its Divine Unity". 26 The first of these is the "lowest Orb of the Soul", the part which is "all set and adorned with the sensitive and shadowy forms of things, as a Meadow with the Trees, and Flowers by a Riverside, are seen, by their shadowy Figures, playing in the water". The rational orb is "more ample and more Lucid", though the angelic order of things is still seen through an Augustinian mist, a "cloudy medium". The third of these orbs reminds us of Marvell's The Garden: The Intellectual part of the Soul, is the Orb or Sphere of Angels. This is the Souls Angelical part. Here the Soul's abstract, and separate from the Body, (which is called the Divine Death of the Soul) beholds the Intellectual Forms of things, the immortal Essences and Substances, the Angels in their own bright and universal Glories, in their own Intellectual Air and Light, which is the Air and Light of Paradise. As a man sees the pleasant Plants of a flourishing Land, walking upon the Land in the midst of them. At the same time, while the Soul thus walks in this paradisical Land, she enjoyeth the pleasure of seeing the River, as a shady lustre or water cast from her self, within her self, the shadowy figures of this Paradise, with her own reflection playing in these waters, and her self from beneath them, with the same Land of Gardens and of Angels, answering exactly, looking to her self above them. Give me leave to interpose one word in this place, for the sake of the more learned Reader; This is the Intellectus Agens, or the Actual, and Active Understanding of the Schools. The Soul in its Intellectual part above the River. As that above, like the living Face before the Glass, appears at the brink of the waters, upon the shore, with all its Angelical Glories round about it, in their Paradisical Region, which lies within the Soul it self. So the Soul beneath appears, looking up from its pearly Cave, at the bottom of the River, like the God of the River, answering and meeting it self above.27 This passage is remarkable for numerous reasons. Among them, the treatment of the Aristotelian (scholastic) division of the active mind, that which creates from within, and the passive mind, or that which is impressed from without, is most interesting. The active part is above the river, like Eve, while the passive part is "meeting it self above". Further the comparison of the soul in Paradise with Eve in Paradise is almost too tempting to resist. And 26 27

Sterry, A Discourse of the Freedom of the Will, 107. Sterry, A Discourse of the Freedom of the Will, 107.

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perhaps we should not resist. Sterry, as a Platonist, Cromwellian, and Puritan, would not have read the second edition of Paradise Lost, since he died in 1672, but it would be easy to believe he might have been among the early readers of the 1667 edition. The Dictionary of National Biography even mentions him as possibly the " M r . Sterry" assigned to Milton as an assistant in the 1650's, though this is not a certain link. Sterry's passage may offer us a way of reading the poolside scene with not only a suggestion of innocence but a suggestion of glory attached to it. If Eve in her quest for self-knowledge (she is trying to discover who she is) can be likened to the soul in its quest for self-knowledge as Sterry interprets it, then Eve in Paradise, even though she is not separate from her body, does just what might be expected of her. She enjoys the pleasure of seeing the river and of seeing herself. For Sterry, there is no reason to deny this pleasure to the soul - provided it is a pleasure enjoyed by the intellectual or angelic part of the soul. 28 The imagery and subsequent action in Paradise Lost would suggest, however, that Eve's sensitive soul (along with every " o r b " ) is operative on the riverbank, too. What the reader is left to decide is whether Eve at any point fails to proceed from the sensitive apprehension through to the intellectual apprehension. Or perhaps more relevantly put: would Eve, without guidance from the Holy Spirit (if we can take God at that point for the Holy Spirit), have progressed to the self-knowledge which she feels she has when she is with Adam? The ambiguity which criticism has discovered, and the two basic points which criticism defends, prolepsis and innocence, are unquestionably inevitable. The scene in Paradise has all the innocence of Paradise, when looked at from the point of view of the soul's discovering itself, the soul's admiring its beauty, Eve questing for self-knowledge. But since innocence gives way to the fall we cannot help but see in the scene something more than (or less than) pure 28 In The Anatomie of Conscience (London, 1623), Immanuel Bourne says something quite relevant to this issue: "Even as in a looking-glasse a man seeth his owne face by reflection, and discerneth the beauty or deformity of that, & the eye seeth it selfe, which else it cannot: So, in Conscience, which is the eye and glasse of the Soule, the Soule beholds her selfe, and sees her owne beauty or deformity..." [p. 8.]

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SELF-KNOWLEDGE IN 'PARADISE LOST'

innocence at work. We can, if we choose, see something of an Aristotelian potential present in Eve and in Adam as well, though less markedly, toward resting at the surfaces of apprehension rather than proceeding on to the last orb of the soul, the Plotinian concept of: "The last, and Divine Orb, the highest Point, the amplest Circuit of the Soul, is its Unity. In this it hath the most immediate resemblance to, and Conjunction with the supream Unity, the Divine Nature".29 Thus the quest of self-knowledge in Paradise Lost is no insignificant one. And the often-quoted scene of Eve examining and admiring herself at the pool may be one of the most crucial of the many examples of the quest. That Eve's quest would resemble the soul's quest appears fairly certain. And if the comparison between Eve and the soul is legitimate, then the complexity which such a comparison develops would seem in harmony with the complexity of the scene as read by critics. It would, even as things stand, seem almost essential to develop a critical view which, while taking the Narcissus comparison into account, would go far beyond the implications such a direct comparison would imply.

29

Sterry, A Discourse of the Freedom of the Will, 107.

Ill PHYSICS: " T H E KNOWLEDGE O F NATURAL T H I N G S "

Traditionally the farthest removed from self-knowledge are the knowledges of the stars, or astronomy, and of natural science. In his Art of Logic Milton defines physics as "the knowledge of natural things". 1 Such a definition is by no means unusual, though the implication of its appearing in an art of logic is significant for us. What it means is that Milton is willing to apply logical methods not only to ethical matters but also to matters relative to nature and sensory apprehension. And as we will see this is no innovation on the part of Milton. If anything it is a characteristic of the systems of knowledge of the men we will discuss in connection with the seventeenth century's conception of the subjects of natural science. Particularly will the connection with logic be apparent in the physics of Peter Ramus, and much later Thomas Hobbes. Milton's willingness to employ reason in ethical and natural areas is further evidence of his essential monistic view, a view which is nowhere so clear as in his treatment of natural science in Paradise Lost. Milton's monism compares favorably with that of the Cambridge Platonists, and it contrasts with Bacon's pluralistic views of the separate types of knowledge of man, God, and nature. Bacon states his case in The Advancement: T h e r e is a Triple Beam of Things; for Nature darts upon the understanding with a direct Beame; God because of the inequality of the medium, which is the creatures, with a refract Beame; and man represented and exhibited to himselfe, with a beam reflext.2 1

Milton, Art of Logic, I, xxxi; The Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Frank Allen Patterson, 18 vols. (New York, 1931-42), XI, 269. 2 Francis Bacon, Of the Advancement and Proficience of Learning or the Partitions of Sciences, III, i; ed. and tr. Gilbert Watts (London, 1640), 132.

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Just as Milton is by no means in thorough agreement on all points with the Cambridge Platonists, he - in his basic disagreement with Bacon's pluralism - tends to find agreement in certain aspects of Bacon's thinking. Milton's relation to the thought of Bacon is a highly complex affair. No one can declare with impunity that Milton is or is not of the Baconian camp, and this is partly because Milton is selective in his acceptance of certain Baconian concepts. For example, while Milton postulates, in Christian Doctrine and elsewhere, a human reason aided by Scripture and revelation as adequate for all purposes, human and divine, he is in curious agreement with Bacon's three beams. Self-knowledge in Paradise Lost does, in a significant sense, depend on a "beam reflex". Natural knowledge is more direct, and God "because of the inequality of the medium" is known through His Son. But that the theory of knowledge established in Paradise Lost is monistic seems fairly plain. After Eve's dream, Adam explains the structure of the soul: But know that in the Soule Are many lesser Faculties that serve Reason as chief; among these Fansie next Her office holds; of all external things, Which the five watchful Senses represent, She forms Imaginations, Aerie shapes, Which Reason joining or disjoining, frames All what we affirm or what deny, and call Our knowledge or opinion. . . (V, 100-108)

Knowledge, then, lies not in the senses alone nor in the fancy or imagination alone, but in the act of judgment which is implied by the reason's active joining or disjoining what is perceived. Adam admits that his knowledge comes to him through his senses and that his reason is a faculty which imposes order on the sensory apprehension of his daily life. This of course does not necessarily include that knowledge which he is created with, the intuitive understanding which he displays in naming the animals. As Adam says, "I nam'd them, as they passed, and understood / Thir Nature, with such knowledg God endu'd / My sudden apprehension" (VIII, 352-354). But this intuitive knowledge, great as it is, is not enough for all his needs. He feels, if not knows, immediately that there is something lacking: "I found not what me thought I wanted

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still" (355), he adds, and he craves Eve though he cannot begin to imagine her. The sudden apprehension that knows the nature of the animals and the fact of the goodness of G o d and His works is only part of the knowledge Adam is to have. Much more is to come not only through experience, but through his discussions with Raphael and, much later and more sadly, with Michael. Those revelations, though in different ways, are offered him primarily through his senses, and the processes of reason and understanding which A d a m uses are quite congruent with the lines quoted f r o m Book IV. Furthermore, Milton sees the art of reason as a common possession of Adam, Eve, the Angels, and God. Perhaps this is the most important point of all. Milton, like Cudworth and the Platonists, like the divines who argued for an immutability of moral goodness and who argued against the voluntarism of those who saw God's will as superior to His reason, attributed reason to God and thus to His creation and His creatures. There is a Plotinian aspect to this concept. God's reason, like His presence, pervades the universe. The further one is from G o d on the scale of nature the dimmer one's reason becomes. Presumably, then, God's reason is supreme and there are things which only He can understand completely; the angels' reason is next in the hierarchy; Adam's is then superior, in slight degree, to Eve's; and Satan's reason should be the least reliable. Raphael says as much in Book V when he explains to Adam, as A d a m had done to Eve, the nature of reason: O Adam, one Almightie is, from whom All things proceed, and up to him return, If not deprav'd from good . . . . . . by gradual scale sublim'd To vital spirits aspire, to animal, To intellectual, give both life and sense, Fansie and understanding, whence the Soule Reason receives, and reason is her being, Discursive, or Intuitive; discourse Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours, Differing but in degree, of kind the same. (469-490) There is then a magnificent Plotinian unity to all creation, with

48

PHYSICS: "THE KNOWLEDGE OF NATURAL THINGS"

reason, like spirit tending toward substance, proceeding from intuitive and immediate (as well as infallible) in God, toward discursive and fallible in man and the fallen angels. However, it must be emphasized that knowledge begins in the senses - except perhaps in its most intuitive Godly form. This explains why Uriel can be referred to as the angel with the sharpest sight in Heaven, why Raphael can be made to perceive in a manner which is not unlike - except in degree - Adam's and Eve's. It explains, too, why even that lowest of senses, touch, can be linked with the angels. Raphael, for example, warns that "if the sense of touch whereby mankind / Is propagated seem such dear delight / Beyond all other, think the same voutsaf't / To cattel and each Beast" (VIII, 579-582). But Adam, while understanding that, looks to the other end of the scale of being, to Raphael himself. And Adam learns that while lovemaking is shared by man with the animals it is shared, too. with the angels. Raphael's famous reply to Adam's question of whether the angels made love as men did furthers the concept of an unbroken continuum in the universe: Whatever pure thou in the body enjoy'st (And pure thou wert created) wee enjoy In eminence, and obstacle find none Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive barrs: Easier then Air with Air, if Spirits embrace, Total they mix, Union of Pure with Pure Desiring . . . (VIII, 622-628)

This passage, then, is not merely amusing or "human". It argues for the consistency of creation that Raphael mentioned in the passage quoted earlier, as well as in the passage in which Raphael admitted: . . . food alike those pure Intelligential substances require As doth your Rational; and both contain Within them every lower facultie Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste, Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate, And corporeal to incorporeal turn. . . (V, 407-413)

Such a concept on Milton's part would seem daring or outrageous

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to those who postulate a total division between the worlds of spirit and matter, a total division between God and His creation, or a manifest division between the worlds of God, Nature, and Man. 3 In Paradise Lost there is neither division nor isolation (except for self-isolation), but a constant, reiterated consistency of creation. Faculties related to the structure of the soul: reason, imagination, understanding, fancy, will, and the senses, differ from the top to the bottom of the hierarchy "but in degree, of kind the same". Such a conception permits a dramatic consistency from Heaven, through Eden, to Hell and Chaos which is more than the mere necessity of accommodating our earthly vision. In each realm all things differ in degree, though every realm is related in certain important ways to every other realm. Our earthly vision must be regarded as a type of that employed in Heaven, just as it must be considered a type of that in Hell. For a moment it may help us understand the nature of reason and understanding - the process of knowledge - as Adam first explained it to Eve by looking at Perry Miller's "shamelessly simplified", as he calls it, analysis of the process of apprehension as it was conceived by Puritans in general. While simplified, it can be seen as a moderate and illuminating statement which is very much in line with Milton's position in Paradise Lost: 3 For the kind of bafflement Milton's corporeal view of the angels causes, see Robert Hunter West, Milton and the Angels (Athens, Georgia, 1955), 105f. West says Milton veers from all angelologists in claiming digestion and sexual intercourse for angels. West feels Milton must have some system in mind but he does not know what it could be. See also pp. 140f. for the Protestant view of the Material nature of all creation, in the Plotinian sense. John Salkeld debates the issue carefully in A Treatise of Angels (London, 1613), 30-58, citing the authorities from Dionysius to Fulgentius who insist that angels are immaterial. He distinguishes between real and illusory visions (48f.), discusses the problem of the possible mutation of the angels, then resolves the dilemma in a reference to Tobit in which Raphael disclaims appearing as a body. The lines Salkeld refers to are translated thus: "All these days did I appear unto you; and I did neither eat nor drink, but it was a vision you yourselves saw". An alternate reading is: "And ye behold me that I have eaten nothing, but a vision hath appeared to you", Tobit 12.19-20 in R. H. Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1913). The visit of Raphael to Tobias is frequently cited as an analog to his visit with Adam. Milton, however, innovates importantly, as I have indicated.

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The impression of an object produces in the sense an image or replica of the thing, generally called the "phantasm" or "species"; the phantasm is then picked up at the eye or ear by the animal spirits and carried posthaste to the common sense in the central chamber of the brain; this faculty apprehends the phantasms, distinguishes one species from another, and relays them to the imagination, fancy, or "phantasy", which, located in the front part of the brain, judges and compares one phantasm with another, retains them when the objects are absent, and sways the sensual inclination by holding and vivifying the objects of desire; after meaning and intelligibility have been attached to the phantasms, they are stored in the memory, which is situated in the posterior lobe of the brain, where they may be "committed to it to keepe, as to their secretarie"; the reason or the understanding, which dwells somewhere above the middle, summons phantasms before its judgment seat from either the imagination or the storehouse of memory, determines which are right and true, and sends the image representing its decision, by the agency of the animal spirits, along the nerves to the will which lives in the heart; the will then embraces true images as the good to be pursued, and commands the "sensitive appetite", which consists of affections or passions; the proper emotions, being thus aroused, transmit the impulse to the muscles.4 Miller's phrenological details (location within the brain of specific faculties) may be somewhat beside the point for Milton and for us, but the process as Miller conceives it is close to that which prevailed as common understanding in the mid-seventeenth century. It also represents Hobbes's psychology. The reasonableness of God's creation was by no means a novelty with Milton. If anything it was a commonplace of theological doctrine, though by no means undisputed, particularly by the voluntarists. Often, of course, the means of disputing this contention was not by attacking it but by omitting it. But commentators like William Ames could praise God by saying His intelligence showed everywhere in nature: "the works of nature are ordained so accurately, and agreeable to reason, that they cannot but proceed from highest reason". 5 Even Calvin could say, On each of his works his glory is engraven in characters so bright, so distinct, and so illustrious, that none, however dull and illiterate, can plead ignorance as their excuse . . . both the heavens and the earth present us with innumerable proofs, not only as those more recondite proofs 4 5

Perry Miller, The New England Mind (New York, 1939), 240, 241. William Ames, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity (London, 1640), 43.

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which astronomy, medicine, and all the natural sciences are designed to illustrate, but proofs which force themselves on the notice of the most illiterate peasant.6 However, Calvin is quick to point out that nature is the order of things which God has established, and it is not to be confused with God Himself. In his sermon Spiritual Opticks (1652), Nathanael Culverwel praised both the world of creatures about us and the world of the stars above us. He saw the world as a vast specular glass in which we might discover ourselves and our creator. Reminiscent of Montaigne's Raymond Sebond, who referred to nature as the second of God's books, Culverwel called nature "this vast volume of the creatures set out by God without any errata in it". He admitted that sin may well have soiled our ability to perceive, but that the book is intact and that God's writing is still clear. The world is, as one calls it, Aenigma Dei. And it is full of looking-glasses . . . I need not speak of the blessed Angels, those pure and crystal mirrours, what glorious representations they give of their Creatour: Look but into your selves, and you will find immortali souls shewing forth that image according to which they were made; or if you will look up to that vast and polished looking-glasse, you will see The heavens declaring

the glory of God, and the firmament

shewing his handy

work?

Though nature may be an "Aenigma Dei", with many unexplained "secrets", there is no explicit injunction against looking into nature or against scientific inquiry. Numerous divines felt that while everyone was to beware vain curiosity and useless knowledge, scientific inquiry, looking to the works of nature with a careful eye, could benefit one's knowledge of God. One such divine, Joseph Glanvill, an eventual member of the Royal Society and a leading skeptic, declared: There is indeed such a depth in Nature, that it is never like to be thoroughly fathomed; and such a darkness upon some of God's Works, that they will not in this World be found out to Perfection: But however, we are not 6 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I, v, 1 and 2; tr. Henry Beveridge, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, 1962), I, 51. 7 Nathanael Culverwel, Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature, with Several Other Treatises (London, 1652), 187.

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kept off by an expressness of Prohibition; Nature is no Holy Mount that ought not to be touched; yes, we are commanded, To Search after Wisdom, and particularly after this, when we are so frequently called upon to celebrate our Creator for his Works', and are encouraged by the success of many that have gone before; For many shall go to and fro, and Science shall be increased,8

However, such a judgment by an eventual member of the Royal Society would appear to be hardly representative of the general view. Zanchius, whom Schultz calls Milton's "favorite authority", has a very different, and conspicuously older, view.9 He admits that "god ordinarilie governeth the world by second causes", which is to say that he admits what Bacon depends upon: the fact that inquiry into the causes of natural events is not an inquiry into first causes. First causes of course are the deepest causes, those which even Milton warns us from speculating idly about. But the fact is, as Bacon and others understood, science is interested in precisely those causes which Zanchius had no uneasiness about. God's first causes were theological: second causes explained scientific facts. And Zanchius, who is more concerned with the nature of the church and the relevance of Scripture, offers us a marvelous denunciation, in the best patristic style, of useless seeking: There is a third kinde of dronkennesse, which is more pestilent then both the other, by how much more subtile it is, and pertaineth more to the minde then to the flesh: namely, a dronkennesse of carnall wisedome, vaine eloquence, and worldlie philosophic. For who so bee addicted to these, as to sweet and counterfeit wines, and therewith bee delighted, and trust uppon them: they then loathing the simplicitie of christian doctrine, will verie soone and easily make shipwracke of their faith: Of which thing the Apostle Saint Paul saieth: Beware least there bee any man that

spoyle you, through philosophie and vaine deceit.10

But Zanchius notwithstanding, the influence of Bacon and the general efflorescence of science in Milton's time and the years immediately preceding his time helped more and more toward granting its due. Paul Kocher says, 8

Joseph Glanvill, "The Usefulness of Philosophy to Theology", in Essays on Several Important Subjects in Philosophy and Religion (London, 1675), 38. 9 Howard Schultz, Milton and Forbidden Knowledge, 86. , 10 Hierome Zanchy (Girolamo Zanchi), His Confession of Christian Religion, tr. anonymous (Cambridge, 1599), epistle 28.

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theology itself split apart the twin continents of natural and supernatural knowledge. Theology took to itself the latter, leaving the former to human science, with the single great commandment that natural knowledge must always subserve the revelation granted through Scripture and Church, never challenge it.11 Whether or not such a distinct split as implied by the "twin continents" was in fact accepted by most divines and scientists in the early years of the seventeenth century, it is clearly evident that knowledge was to keep within limits of reason and to serve the ends of usefulness, by which was meant many things, from aiding salvation to merely avoiding magic and alchemy. As Daniel Tuvill said, Hee alone is to bee counted Wise, whose Knowledge is more for Profit, t h e n f o r Shew . . . Y e t as t h e r e is a foolish knowledge,

s o t h e r e is a wise

ignorance, in not prying into Gods Arke, not enquiring into things not revealed. I would faine know all that I neede, and all that I may: I leave Gods secrets to himselfe.12 And even in Richard Baxter, a man not so closely sympathetic with Bacon as Tuvill was, we find a similar view. Baxter was able to say that "Philosophy is the knowledge of Gods works of Creation"; "a delight in knowledge as such is good and lawful, but not as our Chiefe End"; "It is hard to say that any man can know too much except it be, 1. Matter of Temptation: 2. And of penal Knowledge, raising terrours, and tormenting the Soul". 13 Milton's position was not an anti-scientific one, to say the least, though he was thoroughly aware of the traditional views on the limits of knowledge. 14 As we know not only from Masson's Life but 11

Paul Kocher, Science and Religion in Elizabethan England (San Marino, California, 1953), 37. 12 Daniel Tuvill, Vade Mecum: A Manuall of Essayes Morall, Theologicall (London, 1629), 23, 24. 13 Richard Baxter, A Treatise of Knowledge and Love (London, 1689), 157, 161, 162, 163. Baxter was well aware, however, that knowledge had its limits and he affords us the familiar warning (p. 304) that our first parents fell through a desire for knowledge. 14 The basic works to see are Howard Schultz, Milton and Forbidden Knowledge; Kester Svendsen, Milton and Science (Cambridge, Mass., 1956). But see also Arthur O. Lovejoy, "Milton's Dialogue on Astronomy", in Joseph A. Mazzeo, ed. Reason and the Imagination (New York, 1962), 129-142; Walter C. Curry, Milton's Ontology, Cosmogony, and Physics (Lexington, 1957).

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from the comments Milton made on his own interests, knowledge and learning were extraordinarily met in him. His position, then, can be seen as close to Baxter's, but informed by Zanchius'. In Paradise Lost knowledge has its limits, and temperance is recommended, as we recall in the famous lines (VII, 126-130) which compare knowledge to food and remind us of the outcome of indigestion. Numerous passages advise that knowledge is to be limited and that the "blest pair" (IV, 774-775) should seek to "know no more". But there are many passages, as well, which stress that knowledge is desirable. One remarkable passage recommends not temperance, but its opposite: "Faire Angel, thy desire which tends to know / The works of God, thereby to glorifie I The great Work-Maister, leads to no excess / That reaches blame, but rather merits praise / The more it seems excess" (III, 694-697). Of course we must recall that Uriel thought he was speaking to a cherub, who by nature would be questing after knowledge. And we must remember, too, that the advice is actually given to Satan, who put his knowledge to bad use. But it is significant nevertheless that Milton could conceive of situations in which angels could innocently condone ardent, almost excessive seeking of knowledge. The emphasis on astronomy which critics have observed in Paradise Lost offers us a curious example of the advancement of knowledge. Since the knowledge of the stars was so unrelated to self-knowledge it became a synonym for unnecessary and vain questing. "In contrast to self-knowledge, astronomy became a favorite symbol of idle curiosity, the stars being the objects most obviously remote from man." 1 5 Yet as we know, Adam's curiosity about the working of the stars and the remarkable information which Raphael provides him, with its detail and with Raphael's willingness to be as complete as he can, imply that Milton was not totally convinced in Paradise Lost that knowledge of the stars was vain. Much has been said about the rise of science in Milton's time, the development of the telescope, the excitement stirred by the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1626, and the visit Milton probably made to Galileo during his trip to Italy. All this excitement, coupled 15

Schultz, Milton and Forbidden Knowledge, 5.

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with the discovery of planets and stars and the gradual supplanting of an older system of cosmography, suggests that astronomy might have represented more than idle curiosity. It was unquestionably the most dynamic scientific force in its day, and to condemn astronomy would have been to condemn science. Milton does not condemn it. Its appearance in Paradise Lost is easily explained by its serving the necessity of the epic form. A display of knowledge was only proper for an epic poet, and Milton, one may reason, was merely doing his part. Yet this need not be the only explanation. Irene Samuel says, There is no suggestion that the totality of Adam's knowledge dare not expand to include the stars, the secrets of the deep, and all the universe, but a repeated emphasis on the center, which by being kept central makes even the smallest circle a whole. To know the way to the good life is the "sum of wisdom" in the sense of summation even more than in the sense of summit. 16

Milton, in other words, is capable of having Adam's curiosity blend with the divine plan so that, while skirting the peripheries, Adam can still be seen to be keeping the center. Such a view can be supported if only by suggesting that Raphael was aware that there might be things "unlawful" which Adam could inquire about. Being aware, we might assume, he would not have been as detailed about the stars as he was if such knowledge were not useful to Adam. Arnold Williams, in his examination of the commentaries on Genesis, says that Among the subjects specifically suggested as comprehended in Adam's knowledge astronomy leads the list, followed by natural history. Mersenne states that Adam knew all things elementary (that is, composed of elements) or corporeal as well as sidereal, but holds it impossible to ascertain by reason whether Adam knew the natural and mathematical sciences, physics and geometry, for example. 17

Milton, however, does not agree with the commentators as closely as he might. Father Marin Mersenne, a French contemporary of 18

Irene Samuel, "Milton on Learning and Wisdom", PMLA 64 (1949), 712. Arnold Williams, The Common Expositor (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1948), 82.

17

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PHYSICS: "THE KNOWLEDGE OF NATURAL THINGS"

Bacon and quite possibly influenced by Bacon's Advancement, could easily include astronomy as a science known to Adam. He was a noted anti-Pyrrhonist and an enthusiast of science.18 But Milton was not a practising scientist nor a distinguished Baconian, despite John M. Major's recent suggestion that if the youthful Milton was of the party of the Baconians, he must have w e l c o m e d not only Bacon's great exhortation to m e n to search out universal knowledge, but also the attack by that philosopher o n o n e of the serious diseases of learning, an excessive regard for style. 1 9

But Milton was not directly a Baconian apologist. The closest he approaches the Baconian in Paradise Lost is his elevation of astronomy to a high place in Adam's interest. Indeed this may not be an insignificant sign of his concern. Eve's interest in the stars prompts Adam's famous reply in which he says "Millions of spiritual Creatures walk the Earth / Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep" (IV, 677-678). She has asked why the stars should light the sky when they are asleep and unable to enjoy them. Her question is plainly man-centered and Adam's answer places not only the stars, but Eve as well, in their proper position relative to God. The stars, Adam says, "Shine not in vaine", but by their "stellar vertue" aid all that grows on earth, while at the same time "Ministring light prepar'd, they set and rise; / Least total darkness should by Night regain / Her old possession" (664-666). Adam understands the function of the stars and his comments demonstrate that his knowledge is by no means vain or useless. On the contrary his knowledge brings him closer to understanding the ways of God than if, like Eve, he was unaware of the stars' function. In addition to the functions which he perceives and which he relates directly to Eve, Adam has been said to 18

Though I have not seen Father Mersenne's commentary on Genesis (1623) or his Verite des Sciences (Saint-Jacques, 1625), his well known treatise on music, Traite de L'Harmonie Universelle (Paris, 1627), is an extraordinary document filled with charts and diagrams of a highly advanced order. It represents a genuine contribution to the science of acoustics. The nine volumes of his correspondence edited by Cornelius De Waard (Paris, 1932) are filled with charts and graphs and diagrams which give ample evidence of a scientific interest and considerable skill. 19 John M. Major, "Milton's View of Rhetoric", Studies inPhilology 64 (1967), 707.

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be referring to the doctrine of plenitude, a Renaissance doctrine which correlates with the Great Chain of Being, suggesting, in addition to the orderliness of God's creation, that every chink and hole in the fabric of the universe is filled with something He created.20 The point, certainly, is that Adam's knowledge of the stars leads him to contemplate the divine structure and the godliness of things. Much later when Adam speaks to Raphael of his thirst for knowledge he seems to be asking the very same question Eve asked. Adam, in the presence of Raphael, suggests that the working of the stars are for him "unsearchable" and he asks Raphael to "condescend" to tell him about them. And when Raphael begins his discourse Eve decides to rise and go "forth among her Fruits and Flours" (VIII, 44) to leave matter of such high moment to Adam, since, as she says, she enjoys much more hearing such things from Adam's pleasantly digressive lips, from which "Not Words alone pleas'd her" (57). Adam's question begins with a comparison of the size of the earth, "a graine", with the hugeness of the firmament and "all her numberd Starrs" which seem to roll around the heavens "meerly to officiat light / Round this opacous Earth" (22, 23). It seems to him that Nature has somehow committed a disproportion, and he wishes Raphael to explain to him the truth of the workings of the heavens. Such a question, repeated as it is by Adam, would seem a strange redundancy at this point in the poem, particularly since it comes fron one who had only recently given some of the answers to the question to his wife. This may be a case of Milton's inconsistency. It may be a case, too, of Milton's taking further advantage of the epic convention to discourse some more on the systems of the stars. But then it may be an opportunity to do nothing more than demonstrate that the knowledge of the stars is not necessarily totally innocent. It may, for example, be that Milton is using this chance to treat more conventionally the theme of looking into the secrets of God's work. Raphael begins his answer by proclaiming that "Heav'n / Is as the Book of God before thee 20

Eustace M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture (London, 1943), 30.

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set" (67), and that there is no blame to be attached to his inquiring into it. But he ends his discussion with the famous advice to Adam to be "lowlie wise" (173) and to concern himself with knowledge which is close and not "remote / From use, obscure and suttle" (191-192). All this advice is occasioned by a question which, while in many ways the same as Eve's, proceeds one step further into causes than Eve's. Eve is concerned with second causes. Here "why" can be answered, as it is, by explaining what the immediate consequences of the stars are. Adam, however, is inquiring into more primary causes, into the actual nature of the systematic movement of the stars. In a way he is asking whether the received system of astronomy is Ptolemaic, Copernican, Tychonian, or something else. Raphael's reply is Ptolemaic, and the implications of this are explored in superb detail by Grant McColley in his article "The Astronomy of Paradise Lost".21 Ultimately Raphael's reply suggests that it does not make a great deal of difference how one views the system of the universe: "But whether thus these things, or whether not, I Whether the Sun predominant in Heav'n / Rise on the Earth, or Earth rise on the Sun, / Hee from the East his flaming rode begin, I Or Shee from West her silent course advance . . . Sollicit not thy thoughts with matters hid" (160-167). One's knowledge of it, right or wrong, does not affect the universe. Milton's treatment of astronomy in this particular interchange can be regarded in several ways. Either Milton does not know enough about the specific technical explanations of the movement of celestial bodies as they were best understood in the seventeenth century, a suggestion McColley might help substantiate. Or possibly, in a time of intellectual ferment, Milton might simply be clouding the issue enough that future "true explanations" of the universal system would not invalidate his own explanation. Grant McColley's ultimate conclusions could be made to serve either of these thoughts: Milton manifests a definite interest in the theory of the diurnal rotation of the earth and the doctrine of a plurality of worlds, is polite to the 21

Grant McColley, "The Astronomy of Paradise Lost", Studies in Philology 34 (1937), 209-247.

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Copernican hypothesis as he knew it, and satirizes severely the Ptolemaic The mature Milton displays little interest in the scientific astronomy which was developing during the seventeenth century. His answer to the hypothetical inquiry concerning celestial motions is an exhortation that Adam "search rather things more worthy knowledge."... Despite this lack of interest in technical hypotheses, the poet was powerfully affected by the new astronomy. In Paradise Lost one observes the quickening influence of the telescope, the stimulation of the expanded universe which followed Copernicus and Galileo, and the encouragement which came from contemporary cosmological speculation to voyage with interest and delight among the stars, and to build in the cosmos such worlds as imagination might suggest.22 Milton, then, can be said to be deeply interested, perhaps fascinated by astronomy in his own time, but not necessarily enough of a practicing scientist on his own to take a clearcut stand in Paradise Lost on a system which would be true enough for the angel Raphael to explain to Adam. One must remember that Milton's spokesman is revealing, in a significant sense, God's truth. Surely not even Copernicus or Tycho Brahe could have claimed - or would have wished to claim - as much. Therefore it is no surprise that Raphael veers from the responsibility of offering the true explanation of cosmology in order to deliver a conventional warning against useless inquiry into the ways of God which will produce knowledge "obvious to dispute" (158). But astronomy is not the only science Milton alludes to in Paradise Lost. Numerous other sciences find their way into the poem and figure more or less prominently in Heaven, Hell, and earth. One of the most provocative practices of the early and mid-seventeenthcentury scientists is their systematizing scientific knowledge into Ramist charts which show their natural connections, their sources, and their derivations. These charts serve a mnemonic function like the charts in the beginning of William Ames's The Marrow of Sacred Divinity, but like those charts, too, they also serve an organizing function. They offer a guide to the discussion of the specific sciences so that the reader can see at a glance exactly what is being discussed and where. 22

McColley, "The Astronomy of Paradise Lost", 246, 247.

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Milton may not have been specifically influenced by any one of the charts we are about to discuss. We cannot link him positively to the examples which follow. However, he definitely was familiar with the tradition of organizing knowledge into such systems of easy access. He knew the charts from the work of Ames and scores of other divines and logicians. The use of these charts was prominent in the work of John Dee in the 1570's; Bacon in the early 1600's (though his actual chart appears later in the 1640 edition of the Advancement)-, Robert Fludd in the second decade of the seventeenth century, whose use of such charts was virtually a trademark; Thomas Hobbes in 1651; Ames in 1640, though he has no charts of human knowledge per se; and of course Ramus himself in the latter part of the sixteenth century. And this includes only those prominent writers whose charts are reproduced in the next few pages. How many other examples there are is impossible to guess, but their number and variety are overwhelming. Saurat can say with perhaps undue certainty that Milton knew Fludd, whose "works are an encyclopedia of Kabbalism, NeoPlatonism, Hermetism, and of all sciences and arts of his time, from astrology and even astronomy, to the construction of musical instruments". 23 Saurat takes for granted Milton's knowing Fludd on the basis of Fludd's notoriety and the proposition that "every educated man of the time knew Fludd". Perhaps this is true; it is not unlikely. That Milton knew John Dee's works - though not necessarily first hand - is probable if only because he refers to him twice in his writings, once in the Art of Logic in his translation of Freigius' life of Peter Ramus, and once in A Brief History of Muscovia. That Milton knew Ramus is a certainty. That he knew Bacon seems just as likely. Milton's knowledge of Hobbes is not as easy to demonstrate, though again it is fairly certain that he knew him, particularly in view of the remark of his widow that Milton felt Hobbes to be a man of considerable parts. Marjorie Nicolson is perhaps enthusiastic in her suggestion that The reader who, realizing this profound intellectual and spiritual disturbance of the early Restoration years, turns from the theology and 23

Denis Saurat, Milton: Man and Thinker (New York, 1925), 301.

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philosophy of the generation to its greatest poet, who was also theologian and philosopher, will find himself asking again and again the question: Was not the most magnificent of all replies to Hobbes Milton's Paradise Lost"!24 Paradise Lost is of course an effective answer to Hobbes, just as in its own sphere the writings of R a l p h C u d w o r t h are effective answers. The difference lies in - a m o n g m a n y other significant differences - the fact that C u d w o r t h can be seen as almost certainly intending to answer H o b b e s while Milton in his p o e m is n o t so clearly disposed. Such a possibility is not of significant m o m e n t in o u r consideration. W h a t is of m o m e n t , however, is the question of whether or not Milton was aware of Hobbes, a n d specifically if he would have been aware of his Leviathan in or after 1651. The following may help us decide. The first plate, shown in figure 1, is f r o m Perry Miller's discussion of R a m u s a n d represents one of the clearest of the Ramistic charts analyzing logic. This chart is substantially the same as those which are reproduced in Father Ong's Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue. F a t h e r O n g is convinced that such charts, based on the convenient splitting of a subject into two c o m p o n e n t parts, and ordinarily printed in the f o r m which Miller reproduces, t h o u g h sometimes without the connecting brackets in early editions, were a m o n g the most influential innovations of Ramistic logics. Father O n g links the charts with the art of printing a n d its rise, though, as has been said earlier, Frances Yates contends that such charts h a d appeared earlier in manuscripts. Precedence in time is n o t significant for us, since what is significant is t h a t the charts which R a m u s used a n d m a d e popular were still in use more t h a n a h u n d r e d years after their publication in his works. O n g says, in describing the charts, that Although some few items escape dichotomization... and although variations in the exact arrangement of the dichotomies will continue to appear till Ramus' death, division by dichotomies, established in 1547, remains from now on in effective control of Ramus' arguments through all subsequent editions of The Training in Dialectic and all editions of the 24

411.

Marjorie Nicolson, "Milton and Hobbes", Studies in Philology 23 (1926),

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But every man is a sensible body. Therefore every man is a substance. Here the middle term is "sensible body", the major, "substance", and the minor, " m a n " . All the other names, Baralipton (with -ton added for aid in memorizing), Cesare, Disamis, are easily translatable into such forms for the syllogism by following their vowels in order. The Aristotelian logics are filled with pages of examples of this sort, with all the standard accoutrements for memorization of the terms. There should be no difficulty in seeing that such a system in the hands of teachers could degenerate into vacuous mnemonics with little or no substantial purpose. Ramus does away with all the Barbaras. His innovations do not do away with the syllogism, however. He merely does away with the emphasis upon forms, moods, and memorization, most of which seemed useless to him. In place of syllogistic exercises Ramus concentrates on three means of judgment: the axiom, the syllogism, and method. None of these means of disposition (to use Milton's term in preference to judgment) was necessarily absent from Aristotelian logics. What is different in Ramus is the emphasis, or lack of it, which each of these means receives. Axiom is heavily emphasized, with seven out of seventeen chapters given to it in Milton. Syllogism has eight chapters in Milton, which at first makes it seem that Milton is treating syllogisms more fully than Ramus would. This, again, is not quite so. Four of Milton's chapters deal with connexive and disjunctive syllogisms - the favorite forms of the Ramists and not at all favored by the Aristotelians. These types of syllogisms (examples will be offered shortly) involve either-or dichotomies, and hence suited the Ramist concept perfectly. The final chapter in Milton, and usually in most Ramistic logics, is on Method. It does not receive the emphasis it does later in Descartes though it has become significant for us because of our historical view. By way of comparison, Pierre D u Moulin's The Elements of Logick, tr. Nathanael De Lawne (London, 1624)-somethingof a compromise, it would seem, between Ramus and Aristotle but strongly Aristotelian - devotes fourteen chapters to the syllogism, with one brief chapter each to connex and disjunctive syllogisms.

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Du Moulin devotes another six chapters to Demonstration, a variety of induction, but heavily dependent on the syllogism, the key to demonstrating fully. This section slights axiom and method in favor of syllogistic reasoning. The final section of ten chapters is devoted to fallacies, including the "faults in Syllogismes". This last section is standard though Milton is less concerned with fallacies than most logicians are. He does mention the cornute, or horned, syllogism, which gives rise to the dilemma: an either-or which is equally impossible or repugnant. He discusses the sorites though he does not trust it entirely. He discusses the enthymeme and treats it as if it were an imperfect syllogism - with the minor premise usually omitted - rather than a syllogism, as Aristotle intended it, which would merely afford probable rather than certain conclusions. A useful comparison between Milton's Ramist logic and William Ames's Ramist logic can be made by consulting the chart on the following page. It is particularly noteworthy for several reasons. One is that it was done by a divine Milton carefully consulted in the writing of his Christian Doctrine. Ames's The Marrow of Sacred Divinity (London, 1640) was introduced with twenty-five pages of Ramist charts analyzing divinity. Ames also wrote a Ramist logic which was published first in 1646 in Cambridge. His Demonstrate Logicae Verae was reprinted for some reason unknown a few months before Milton's logic in 1672. The chart shown in figure 12 is from that reprinting in a copy bound with Milton's Artis Logicae. The binding of this copy, in the Huntington Library, is almost unquestionably contemporary. Another copy of these works bound in the same way is in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Charles Waddington mentions both these editions in his work on Ramus, citing Ames's publication as being prior to Milton's by a few months and sponsored by a library at Cambridge. 10 Milton's logic compares quite closely with Ames's, and the chart could represent relatively adequately the outline of either of the works. Ames's edition is also prefaced by a generous sample of charts quite like those found in his Marrow. And though Ames 10

Waddington, Ramus: Sa vie, ses écrits et ses opinions, 397.

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. . . her every Aire Of gesture or lest action overawd His Malice, and with rapin sweet bereav'd His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought: That space the Evil one abstracted stood From his own evil, and for the time remaind Stupidly good, of enmitie disarmd, Of guile, of hate, of envie, of revenge;

as such Eve overwhelms him, argues him out of his intentions by her very presence and her beauty, But the hot Hell that alwayes in him burnes, Though in mid Heav'n, soon ended his delight, And tortures him now more, the more he sees Of pleasure not for him ordaind: then soon Fierce hate he recollects, and all his thoughts Of mischief, gratulating, thus excites, (459-472)

And when he recovers himself (the Hell within him is an even more intense argument), what he sees does not cease to argue: it argues for a different end: to intensify his pain and his purpose. In the following passage Satan soliloquizes, "Thoughts, whither have ye led me . . . ", and is strikingly honest with himself. What he has seen argues him into admitting what Ithuriel and Zephon could not convince him of earlier: "so much hath Hell debas't, and paine / Infeebl'd me, to what I was in Heav'n" (487-488). But nevertheless he is resolved, and his next action is to approach Eve in something of a parody - or a travesty - of Eve's approach to him. It is as if he were offering his own spectacular beauty, however sinister it may be to us as readers, as a counter-argument to Eve's. Ironically, however, Eve does not see his approach as a "surging Maze, his Head / Crested aloft, and Carbuncle his Eyes; / With burnisht Neck of verdant Gold" (499-501). His attempts to lure Eve, right down to the often remarked passage "Of rusling Leaves" (519), fail until he stands directly before her and "bowd / His turret Crest, and sleek enameled Neck" (524-525). His presence, his beauty, argue Eve into wonder as we can see from Satan's first line, "Wonder not, sovran Mistress" (532), and his ability to speak surprises her even more. And true to Satanic form the Serpent's initial arguments are flattery and overpraise.

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This passage is deeply rhetorical, one sees immediately, as well as logical in its sources of power. We would expect to have Satan resort to any trick or deceit available to him, of course; to expect him to be strictly or soundly logical is not really sensible. Yet since Eve is herself such a good logician (Ramistically and peripatetically) he cannot risk totally fallacious logic. What he does is to salt his logical attack with whatever rhetorical or emotional appeals he can dare hope to get away with. Eve's response is to marvel at a talking serpent. She does think it strange that an animal, "Created mute to all articulat sound" (557), should be talking man's language and it may be true that she should have known right away that such a phenomenon argued the presence of her foe. And it is likely that she should have found Adam and queried him about this occurrence, but the combination of her being startled, amazed, and attentive help keep such thoughts from her mind. Thus the rhetorician's device of arresting attention immediately has more significance in this situation than we might ordinarily afford it. And the fact that Satan succeeds as a rhetorician in this passage (and in others as well), seems to indicate that Milton was not completely confident in approving the art of rhetoric. John M. Major calls into question, for instance, not Milton's rejection of a debased rhetoric, but his suspicion of the art itself and all that it claimed to do. The attitude enters rather mildly in Comus, takes definite shape in the prose, and by the time of the two epics has hardened into outright hostility.22 Major, it must be noted, also suggests that Milton did respect what he felt was true rhetoric, that which gave "artistic and logical control, clarity, vitality, design, variety, color, polish, decorum . . . etc." Major suggests, relying on Howell, that the Ramist innovations in logic tended to weaken rhetoric since Ramus claimed invention and arrangement to be parts of logic rather than rhetoric, as they had always formerly been. Of course it is quite apparent in these scenes that logic and rhetoric - while not the same thing are clearly interwoven. Calvin comments on the wonder of Eve at seeing the serpent 22

696.

John M. Major, "Milton's View of Rhetoric", Studies inPhilology 64 (1967),

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and hearing it speak. It poses no problem for him. "I doubt not, but that Hevah perceived this to be extraordinarie: and therefore she greedily received that, whereat she wondered . . . The woman doth not refuse to talke with the serpent, because as yet there was no debate: therefore she accounted him no lesse than a domesticall beaste". 23 It is doubtful that Milton follows Calvin in the treatment of this point, but nonetheless even Calvin does not demand that Eve be put off immediately at sight of the talking Serpent. There is nothing "illogical" in the loose sense of the word in Eve's listening to the Serpent. In order to understand what follows upon Eve's pausing to listen one further distinction of a logical order must be pointed out. It is the distinction between artificial and inartificial arguments: a source of misunderstanding for logicians like Fraunce just as it might be for those of us less carefully trained in logic. The current connotations attached to the words must be forgotten. Artificial arguments are not "made u p " or spurious. They are discovered by the art of logic in nature; they are matter of loci or places. In other words they are perceptible, accidental, natural. The hand of Eve is an artificial argument. The fragrance she is wrapped in is an artificial argument. If we examine Abraham Fraunce's Ramist "Table of the whole Booke" shown in Figure 15 we see that he refers to it as "Inhaerent", a way of avoiding the connotation in English which "artificial" has. Fraunce's term for inartificial arguments is "Borrowed", which tells us quickly what inartificial arguments are: testimony of others, both human and divine. A glance back at any of Ramus' charts of dialectic will show that his tradition is consonant with Fraunce's: artificial arguments are the most important in that they receive the largest share of attention. Inartificial arguments are of two varieties, as in Fraunce, and once one has observed the distinction there is little to say. Milton, however, has a great deal to say. He explains the distinction between the two forms of argument thus:

23

John Calvin, A Commentarie of John Calvin, upon the First Booke of Moses Called Genesis, tr. Thomas Tymme (London, 1578), 86, 87.

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