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Hyle, or First Matter

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The Metaphysics of Henry More

Abstract

The physical universe now gets probed more deeply, via a study of More’s changing views on ‘Hyle’, the mere potentiality of corporeal creation. In a nutshell: in 1646, More felt that the nature of such potentiality could be explicated in terms of an atomised space; in 1662, he felt that it could be explicated in terms of atoms or in terms of space; in 1671, he argued directly against the latter approach and came down firmly in favour of the former.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    I already presented some of the material of this chapter, together with the two that follow it, in Reid 2007, but in a less fully developed way.

  2. 2.

    Plato 1963, p. 1167 (Timaeus, 37d). Subsequent remarks in this paragraph come mostly from pp. 1176–77.

  3. 3.

    Aristotle 1984, vol. 2, p. 1625 (Metaphysics, bk. 7, ch. 3; 1029a11–12)

  4. 4.

    Aristotle 1984, vol. 2, p. 1657 (Metaphysics, bk. 9, ch. 7; 1049a19–26).

  5. 5.

    See, for instance, Mohr 1985, pp. 91–98. Also Sorabji 1988, chs. 1–3, especially pp. 3–10 and 32–36.

  6. 6.

    Plotinus 1992, p. 128 (enn. 2, tr. 4, ch. 12).

  7. 7.

    Plotinus 1992, p. 133 (enn. 2, tr. 4, ch. 16).

  8. 8.

    Plotinus 1992, p. 138 (enn. 2, tr. 5, ch. 4).

  9. 9.

    Plotinus 1992, p. 77 (enn. 1, tr. 8, ch. 3).

  10. 10.

    See the full discussion in ennead 1, tractate 8; enn. 2, trs. 4, 5; and enn. 3, tr. 6 (Plotinus 1992, pp. 76–89, 119–140, 227–253). Also see O’Brien 1996.

  11. 11.

    Ficino 2001–2006, vol. 1, pp. 31–33 (bk. 1, ch. 3); vol. 2, pp. 23–27 (bk. 5, ch. 5), 43–45 (bk. 5, ch. 8), 71–73 (bk. 5, ch. 12); vol. 3, pp. 133–135 (bk. 10, ch. 3); vol. 6, p. 237 (Appendix).

  12. 12.

    Ficino 2001–2006, vol. 3, pp. 151–155 (bk. 10, ch. 5).

  13. 13.

    Ficino 2001–2006, vol. 1, p. 41 (bk. 1, ch. 3).

  14. 14.

    Lucretius 1994, pp. 13–15 (bk. 1, lines 146–199).

  15. 15.

    Plotinus 1992, p. 126 (enn. 2, tr. 4, ch. 11).

  16. 16.

    Plotinus 1992, p. 127 (enn. 2, tr. 4, ch. 11).

  17. 17.

    Plotinus 1992, p. 125 (enn. 2, tr. 4, ch. 9).

  18. 18.

    Plotinus 1992, p. 244 (enn. 3, tr. 6, ch. 16).

  19. 19.

    Plotinus 1992, p. 248 (enn. 3, tr. 6, ch. 19).

  20. 20.

    See especially Sorabji 1988, chs. 1–3. Also Grant 1981, pp. 14–15, 268 n. 8, 272–273 nn. 37–41.

  21. 21.

    More in Hotham 1650, unpaginated dedicatory poem. Compare, much later, More’s equally double-edged comment on the Jewish cabbala: ‘I do not doubt but there is pretious gold in this Cabbalisticall rubbish, which the discerning eye will easily discover.’ Conway Letters, p. 351 (More to Conway, 5 February 1671/2).

  22. 22.

    Hotham 1650, p. 33.

  23. 23.

    Hotham 1650, p. 35. The text actually reads ‘tircumscrib’d’: clearly just a misprint.

  24. 24.

    On Hotham in relation to More, and their exchange of verses to one another, see Hutton 1990b, pp. 169–171 and passim.

  25. 25.

    See Descartes 1991, pp. 49–52/AT 8A:52–55/CSM 1:232–234 (pt. 2, §§22–27).

  26. 26.

    The Complete Poems, p. 55a–b (Psychathanasia, bk. 1, cant. 4, sts. 1–2); see also p. 148a (notes upon Psychathanasia, bk. 1, cant. 1, st. 16); and p. 162a (The Interpretation Generall, ‘Hyle, Materia prima’).

  27. 27.

    See The Complete Poems, pp. 13a–21b, (Psychozoia, cants. 1 and 2, as far as st. 23 of the latter; but especially cant. 2, sts. 13–15). Also, more succinctly, see pp. 54a (Psychathanasia, bk. 1, cant. 3, st. 23); and 108a–b (Antipsychopannychia, cant. 2, sts. 4–8). And, from the 1646–47 additions, see passim throughout the notes upon Psychozoia and The Infinity of Worlds. On More’s Ogdoas, see Fouke 1997, ch. 2; Crocker 2003, ch. 3. This Ogdoas is also discussed in various works of Alexander Jacob (for instance Jacob 1991, pp. 104–105): but Jacob’s interpretations of More, both here and elsewhere, need to be treated with considerable caution.

  28. 28.

    The Complete Poems, pp. 10a–12b (To the Reader, upon the first Canto of Psychozoia).

  29. 29.

    The Complete Poems, pp. 14a, 20a, 114b, 55a (Psychozoia, cant. 1, st. 9; cant. 2, st. 9; Antipsychopannychia, cant. 3, sts. 24–25; Psychathanasia, bk. 1, cant. 4, st. 2).

  30. 30.

    The Complete Poems, p. 54b (Psychathanasia, bk. 1, cant. 3, st. 24).

  31. 31.

    The Complete Poems, pp. 55a, 56b (Psychathanasia, bk. 1, cant. 4, sts. 1, 9). There is a passage in Psychathanasia where More appeared to indicate that this really was supposed to mean all created beings, even those that might standardly be regarded as wholly immaterial. The fact that Hyle was ‘plain potentialitie’, he wrote, did ‘not straight inferre certain mortalitie. / For the immortall Angels do consist / Of out-gone act and possibilitie’ (op. cit, p. 55b: Psychathanasia, bk. 1, cant. 4, sts. 2–3). This would tie in with the continuous nature of the supposed hierarchy of reality: anything below God would ipso facto need to be less perfect, i.e. less fully actual, than him; and consequently would need to display at least some faint trace of unactualised potentiality. However, in More’s discussions of first matter after 1642, he made it clear that he was only really interested in the possibility of corporeal creation.

  32. 32.

    The Complete Poems, p. 162a (The Interpretation Generall: ‘Hyle, Materia prima’).

  33. 33.

    A Collection of Aphorisms, pp. 13–14 (part 2, aphorism 1). This ‘hulē’ was, of course, just the actual (though here transliterated) Greek of More’s anglicised term, ‘Hyle’. As for ‘anangkē’, this meant ‘necessity’. We also find More referring to ‘Hyle or Ananke’ at The Complete Poems, p. 54a (Psychathanasia, bk. 1, cant. 3, st. 23); and, in The Interpretation Generall, he would explain: ‘Ananke. Anangkē. The same that Hyle is. But the proper signification of the word is Necessity’ (p. 159b). This parallel is further evidence of an early date of composition for these aphorisms (see above, p. 19 n. 57).

  34. 34.

    ‘Blictri’ was a nonsense word, deliberately left undefined, which was used by some early modern authors (and earlier ones too, right back into classical times) to illustrate how a statement could have the formal structure of an assertion of existence and yet remain utterly vacuous. See, for instance, Malebranche 1997a, p. 25 (dial. 1, §7); Toland 1997, pp. 81–82 (sect. 3, ch. 4). Also, using the variant ‘Blityri’, Leibniz 1951, p. 117 (Theodicy, §76).

  35. 35.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 185 (Appendix to the Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 8, §6).

  36. 36.

    The Complete Poems, pp. 108b, 114b (Antipsychopannychia, cant. 2, st. 8; cant. 3, st. 25).

  37. 37.

    The Complete Poems, p. 108b (Antipsychopannychia, cant. 2, §9).

  38. 38.

    The Complete Poems, p. 114b (Antipsychopannychia, cant. 3, §25).

  39. 39.

    The Complete Poems, p. 160a (The Interpretation Generall: ‘Body’).

  40. 40.

    The Complete Poems, p. 142a (notes upon Psychozoia, cant. 2, st. 6).

  41. 41.

    The Complete Poems, p. 164a (The Interpretation Generall: ‘Quantitative’).

  42. 42.

    The Complete Poems, p. 51b (Psychathanasia, bk. 1, cant. 2, st. 56). See pp. 44–46 above.

  43. 43.

    The Immortality of the Soul, pp. 169–170, 180 (bk. 3, ch. 3, §2; ch. 5, §2). The word ‘conspissation’ bears an evident relationship to the word ‘spissitude’, a term that will turn out to be of prime importance in More’s later discussions of the nature of spiritual extension: see Chap. 5 below.

  44. 44.

    An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 125 (bk. 3, ch. 12, §2).

  45. 45.

    The Complete Poems, p. 160a (The Interpretation Generall: ‘Body’).

  46. 46.

    The Complete Poems, p. 160b (The Interpretation Generall: ‘Cuspis of the Cone’).

  47. 47.

    The Complete Poems, pp. 60a, 160a (Psychathanasia, bk. 2, cant. 2, st. 12; The Interpretation Generall: ‘Body’). See pp. 66–67 above.

  48. 48.

    The Complete Poems, p. 92a (Democritus Platonissans, st. 12).

  49. 49.

    See Vaughan 1650a, here at p. 4; Observations upon Anthroposophia Theomagica, and Anima Magica Abscondita, pp. 14–15 (upon Anthroposophia Theomagica, pag. 9); Vaughan 1650b, pp. 39–44 (observation 5); The Second Lash of Alazonomastix, pp. 100–101 (upon [page 39], observation 5).

  50. 50.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 171 (Appendix to the Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 7, §3).

  51. 51.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 79 (The Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala, upon ch. 1, vers. 9).

  52. 52.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 209 (The Defence of the Moral Cabbala, upon ch. 1).

  53. 53.

    Genesis 1:1–9, 13, King James Version.

  54. 54.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica (1653 edition), p. 23 (The Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 1, §1).

  55. 55.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 11 (The Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 1, §1).

  56. 56.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 11–12 (The Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 1, §2).

  57. 57.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 12 (The Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 1, §5).

  58. 58.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 75 (The Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala, upon ch. 1, vers. 5).

  59. 59.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 13 (The Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 1, §8). This heavenly matter was also contrasted with the symbolic ‘heaven’ of the first day, which was not material in either a physical or a metaphysical sense, but which was rather understood as ‘The whole comprehension of Intellectual Spirits, Souls of men and beasts, and the Seminal forms of all things, which you may call, if you please, The World of Life’: p. 11 (The Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 1, §1).

  60. 60.

    An Antidote Against Atheism, pp. 199–201 (Appendix, ch. 7). Also see the discussion in Ward 2000, pp. 256–259.

  61. 61.

    An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 200 (Appendix, ch. 7, §3).

  62. 62.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 175 (Appendix to the Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 7, §§10–11).

  63. 63.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 183 (Appendix to the Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 8, §2).

  64. 64.

    Ibid.

  65. 65.

    Plotinus 1992, p. 237 (enn. 3, tr. 6, ch. 9).

  66. 66.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 185 (Appendix to the Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 8, §6).

  67. 67.

    Ibid. The Aquinas reference is to Summa theologica, pt. 1, qu. 45.

  68. 68.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 189 (Appendix to the Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 9, §1).

  69. 69.

    Ibid.

  70. 70.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, pp. 74–75 (The Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala, upon ch. 1, vers. 2).

  71. 71.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 190 (Appendix to the Defence of the Philosophicak Cabbala, ch. 9, §2).

  72. 72.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 189 (Appendix to the Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 9, §2).

  73. 73.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 190 (Appendix to the Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 9, §2).

  74. 74.

    Conjectura Cabbalistica, p. 191 (Appendix to the Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala, ch. 9, §5).

  75. 75.

    The Complete Poems, p. 142b (notes upon Psychozoia, cant. 2, st. 12).

  76. 76.

    Conway Letters, p. 487 (More to Conway, 5 May 1651). In the letter itself, the words ‘logicall’ and ‘therefore’ are doubled up, for no apparent reason.

  77. 77.

    An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 200 (Appendix, ch. 7, §3).

  78. 78.

    An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 201 (Appendix, ch. 7, §6).

  79. 79.

    This is a point that has sometimes been missed in the secondary literature, where the notions of space as potentiality and space as the divine amplitude have occasionally been conflated. See, for instance, Guinsberg 1980, p. 46, or Crocker 2003, p. 150.

  80. 80.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, p. 51 (ch. 7, §12).

  81. 81.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, pp. 51–52 (ch. 7, §13); see also p. 56 (ch. 8, §5).

  82. 82.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, p. 52 (ch. 7, §14). See also Divine Dialogues, p. 56 (dial. 1, §27).

  83. 83.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, p. 52 (ch. 7, §14). See also Divine Dialogues, p. 60 (dial. 1, §28).

  84. 84.

    An Antidote Against Atheism, p. 230 (Appendix, ch. 7, §3, scholium). In other scholia on this same page, he also responded to one of the other proposals he had made in the course of that same 1655 discussion, namely that distance might be ‘no real or Physical property of a thing, but only notional’ by being ‘nothing else but the privation of tactual union’ (§§4–5), More withdrew this suggestion too, emphasising that space was something real and entirely independent of the bodies that were located in it.

  85. 85.

    Aristotle 1984, vol. 1, pp. 356–357 (Physics, bk. 4, ch. 2; 209b11–15). See the notes on this passage in Aristotle 1983, pp. 104–107.

  86. 86.

    Aristotle 1984, vol. 1, p. 357 (Physics, bk. 4, ch. 2; 209b22–31).

  87. 87.

    Enchiridion metaphysicum, vol. 1, p. 71 (ch. 9, §1).

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    Jasper Reid

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Reid, J. (2012). Hyle, or First Matter. In: The Metaphysics of Henry More. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 207. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3988-8_3

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