The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats

267 ity.’’ She convinces us that ‘‘[i]f domestics are factored out of the family from which modern theories of gender and sexuality derive, large parts of the historical process by which those theories have become naturalized categories of gender and sexual identity will be lost.’’ Domestic Affairs goes a long way toward recovering that history. Elizabeth Kraft University of Georgia W. J. MANDER. The Philosophy of John Norris. Oxford: Oxford, 2008. Pp. x ⫹ 217. $65. In the interest of ‘‘full disclosure’’ I note that I have long been an enthusiastic stockholder in Norris, Inc.; not only have I plumped for his important influence on Sterne’s writings, but I have encouraged my colleagues and students to pay attention to him as well, one result being the recent book (2009) by E. Derek Taylor revealing the pervasive significance of Norris in Richardson ’s Clarissa. Also, Taylor and I have edited Mary Astell’s epistolary exchange with Norris, Letters Concerning the Love Of God (2005). Hence, I am not one of those for whom the first question will be, ‘‘Who is John Norris of Bemerton, and why should a twenty -first-century scholar be interested in him?’’ Mr. Mander is aware of this question, and while he concludes with the one topic by which Norris might be vaguely known—the debate with Locke—he offers better rationales for the importance of Norris; for example, that ‘‘the general tendencies of an age may often be seen more clearly in its writers of the second rather than of the first rank.’’ He suggests , also, that Norris represents a ‘‘fascinating coming together of three distinct traditions—Platonism, Scholasticism , and the Cartesian-inspired philosophy of Malebranche—with the steadfast resistance of a fourth—Baconian scientific empiricism.’’ And, lastly, he notes that Norris was ‘‘well regarded in his day and for years afterwards, . . . [and] was more influential than current neglect of his work might suggest.’’ Unfortunately , Mr. Mander’s interest in the last reason is at best perfunctory; most especially his limp discussion of the Wesley-Norris connection would have profited greatly from the context afforded by Richard E. Brantley’s Locke, Wesley , and the Method of English Romanticism (1984). Mr. Mander lists the Taylor-New edition of Letters Concerning the Love of God, but clearly has not consulted it, despite its overlapping discussion of the Locke-Norris exchange and an Introduction that would have usefully engaged his own readings. Mr. Mander would appear to be an historian of philosophy, both an advantage and disadvantage in reading Norris . To the plus side, he works very hard to explicate for less sophisticated readers Norris’s metaphysical magnum opus, Essay towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World (1701, 1704). He is helpful in describing Norris’s relationship to the Platonic tradition, to Augustine and Aquinas, to the Cambridge Platonists , to Descartes and Malebranche, distinguishing usefully the points of agreement and disagreement, as well as defining with clarity those few excursions where Norris has original insights, some of which nicely anticipate Kant. Above all, he provides a handbook to Norris’s involuted text, arranging its elements , organizing its dichotomies, and in general providing us with a summary of key points on the typical topics of Platonic philosophy: intelligible, divine, 268 and natural worlds; mind, body, and soul; idealism, realism, and materialism. This occupies the first half of the book. As Mr. Mander observes, however, ‘‘for Norris, as for Malebranche and Berkeley, the driving motivation for philosophy is theological. The three share, moreover, a common strategy in this regard : they aim to refute atheism and to place belief at the very centre of everything by so weaving God into the fabric of their system that nothing really makes sense without Him.’’ To be precise , it should be added that for Norris, theology was Anglican Christianity, and that his importance in the eighteenth century was not as a metaphysician (as with Berkeley), but as a Christian moralist . It is significant that when Norris published his sermons, he did so in four volumes entitled Practical Discourses (1690, 1691, 1693, 1698). The titles of most of his other works attest to this Christian moral interest: Theory and Regulation of Love (1688...