CHAPTER FOUR A Proposal of a Renaissance Psychology
Transcript of CHAPTER FOUR A Proposal of a Renaissance Psychology
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CHAPTER FOUR
A Proposal of a Renaissance Psychology
I have suggested in the foregoing chapters that alchemy may be seen to
offer an impressionistic adumbration of some Renaissance theories
concerned with the transformation of both the individual and of society.
Ruth Leila Anderson argues that “With the English Renaissance there came
a revival of interest in psychology and ethics and an extended application of
the principles of these subjects not only to individual life but also to affairs
of society and of the state” (3). Although it would be presumptuous to try
and find a comprehensive psychology in any one author or philosophy, I do
believe it is possible to distil a Renaissance conception of psychology from
various occult and philosophical texts.
A Case for a Renaissance Psychology
Copenhaver points out that “cosmologia, ontologia, psychologia and their
vernacular derivatives first appeared in the early modern period”
(‘Translation, Terminology and Style’, 109), and I will attempt to
demonstrate how these concepts may be seen to converge, in the occult arts,
with the theories of knowledge, power, and human transformation.1 Park
and Kessler are even more specific and recount:: “The term psychologia itself
was coined – apparently by the German humanist Joannes Thomas Freigius
in 1575 – to refer to the traditional complex of problems originating from
Aristotle’s works, especially De Anima and Parva Naturalia” (‘The Concept of
1 Eckhard Kessler points out that, “Traditionally, Renaissance psychology was primarily concerned with the theory of knowledge for anthropological or cosmological reasons, since the essence of man – defined as anima rationalis in the Aristotelian or as nexus mundi in the Neoplatonic tradition – had to be described in terms of the physical or metaphysical assumptions necessary to save the phenomena of the highest human activity” (‘The Intellective Soul’, 533).
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Psychology’, 455). They also point out that psychology, “the philosophical
study of the soul”, was never a discrete, self-contained discipline (455).2
Rather:
Because it considered the nature and functions of the specifically
human soul and body, among others, psychology overlapped many
other areas of enquiry. Philosophers considered psychology relevant
to ethics, which required a basic understanding of the soul as the
source of man’s thoughts and actions and the seat of his ultimate
perfection (456).
Furthermore, and particularly relevant to this thesis, is the argument by Park
and Kessler that, “psychology, like ethics, never remained the monopoly of
academic specialists; some of the most interesting and original work on the
soul took place outside university walls, particularly after 1500, when
printing acted dramatically to expand the European intellectual community”
(457).
Montaigne
One of the foremost contemporary writers on the soul, and a true eclectic,3
was Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 1592). Although he persistently disavows
2 Anderson makes a similar point, explaining that “The system of psychology … is a complex doctrine inherited from Plato and Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen. It cannot be separated at all points from astrology, medicine, ethics, philosophy, and even theology” (3). 3 In the introduction to The Essays of Montaigne, J. M. Robertson explains the nature of Montaigne’s eclecticism: “His quiet success was the outcome of three factors, his manifold matter, his unmethodical method, and his unmannered manner. His serious counsel was the febrifuge that most men needed. But it was blended with a vast variety of expatiation on a hundred topics of human interest, the talk of a widely read and widely interested man, chatting with his fellows as having no axe to grind, but merely delivering himself of most of the thoughts and comments on life that came to him in the chances of his discursive reading and his daily experience” (xli).
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any ulterior motives of fame and fortune,4 he nevertheless gained immense
popularity, at home – in France – and abroad, especially after the English
translation of his Essays by John Florio in 1603.5
While Montaigne might not be considered a ‘psychologist’ in modern
terms,6 MacFarlane and Maclean warn that “we run the risk of supposing
that because Montaigne did not have in his vocabulary certain words that we
commonly use today, he had no notion of the things that we use these
words to represent” (58). Taking my cue from these critics, I will proceed on
the understanding that Montaigne’s writings represent a particularly vivid
instance of Renaissance psychology, and will draw on some of his
observations and insights to substantiate my argument at various points
throughout the following chapters.
Nicholas H. Steneck, in his work on Science and Creation in the Middle Ages,
offers a description of conceptions of psychology which is applicable to
both the Middle Ages and the early modern period, especially given
historical continuities and synergies. The following extracts provide an apt
preface to this chapter:
The extraneous character of practical application and measurement to
explanations of nature also applies to the case of the one human
science that occupied more of the scholastic scientist’s time than any
other, psychology. There can be little doubt that the medieval
4 “I had no other but a private and family end in view. I thought neither of being serviceable to you, nor of my own fame…. I desire to be seen in my simple, natural, and everyday dress, without artifice or constraint; for it is myself I portray” (‘To the Reader’, Essays, 1). 5 The dissemination of Montaigne’s writings may be illustrated by the instance of Shakespeare’s appropriation – conceded by most critics – of parts of Montaigne’s essay, ‘Of Cannibals’ in his description of the island in The Tempest. 6 The word psychologia does not appear in his Essays.
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scientist felt compelled to discuss and account for the cognitive
process…. The investigation of the cognitive process can be carried
on in a number of ways. Since the study of how we know
(psychology) is closely related to the study of the nature of what we
know and the knowing process (epistemology), psychological
problems in the Middle Ages could (and often were) broached in very
philosophical terms, which in turn, and in line with the general
orientation of scholastic philosophy, were heavily dependent on the
tools of the logician. Or, since the primary agent of cognition is the
soul, the study of how we know could be (and again was) approached
equally as well from the standpoint of theology…. Finally, since
cognition initially begins as a physical process, psychology could be
approached from the standpoint of the mechanisms and material
components involved in the knowing process (131-132).
Paracelsus was one of the early modern philosophers to investigate the
relationship between psychology and epistemology. His conclusions,
perhaps inevitably, are to some extent informed by his interest in the occult.
In his discussion of the Paracelsian conception of knowledge, Massimo
Luigi Bianchi argues for a repositioning of Paracelsus’s work within the
alchemical canon. Although the alchemical theories provide a basis for
much of Paracelsus’s own work, these traditional doctrines are remodelled
and amplified to accommodate a far more extensive and generalised
epistemological proposition. Consequently, “its basic ideas assume a
theoretical significance and … become the schemata on which Paracelsus
models his own conception of knowledge” (‘The Visible and Invisible’, 17).
Bianchi goes on to explain that knowledge, according to the Paracelsian
model, is a gradual process of ‘revelation’, or opening up, so that one pierces
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beyond the superficial façade of things until the hidden substance is revealed
and made manifest. Therefore, “Paracelsus sees the process of knowledge as
a movement which starts from what is immediately perceived by the senses;
and, in going beyond this, succeeds in rendering visible, though not always
to the bodily eye, what was at first invisible behind the initial appearance”
(18). Paracelsus himself writes:
Behold the herbs! Their virtues are invisible and yet they can be
detected. Behold the beasts which can neither speak nor explain
anything, and yet nothing is so hidden in them that man cannot learn
of it. Thus there is no thing on earth or in the sea, in chaos or in the
firmament, that does not become manifest at the appointed time …
It is not God’s will that His secrets should be visible; it is His will that
they become manifest and knowable through the works of man who
has been created in order to make them visible (Writings, 109).
Paracelsus goes on to deliberate upon the relationship between natural and
divine knowledge:
Man possesses two kinds of reason: angelic and animal. The angelic
reason is eternal, and comes from God…. God has also given us the
animal reason, but it is not eternal…. Natural [animal] reason and
eternal wisdom belong together. Natural reason may exist without
eternal wisdom, when it follows the heathen way, and is not
concerned with the Eternal. But eternal reason cannot exist without
natural wisdom because man must find the eternal in the natural….
God has given His power to the herbs, put it in stones, concealed it
in seeds; we should take it from them, we should seek it in them. The
angels possess wisdom in themselves, but man does not. For him
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wisdom lies in nature, in nature he must seek it…. Through nature
God’s power is revealed to man (Writings, 160-164).
Knowledge and Power
Again, it is clear that the object of knowledge and the nature of wisdom are
manifest in the acquisition of power. This apprehension of the nature of
knowledge may be seen to echo alchemical theories, for the adepts of this
Art held that that which is initially perceived as base or worthless is merely
the outer shell which encompasses the untold potential of divine power.
The alchemists endeavoured, therefore, to penetrate the concealing mantle
of the natural world and apprehend the latent power permeating all of
nature.
Many alchemists also believed that this knowledge had been more easily
accessible to the sages of the past. Not only had this knowledge been
gradually obscured with the passage of time, but humanity, impaired
through the Fall, had progressively ceded its rightful inheritance of wisdom
and power. It was only through uncompromising dedication and exertion
that the wisdom of the Golden Age could be recovered. This knowledge
was available to the adept in the form of the ‘Two Books of God’ – Nature
and Scripture – and in the numerous alchemical and occult writings extant at
the time. However, although accessible to the scholars of the early modern
period in manuscript or printed form, most, if not all, were arcane and
tantalizingly enigmatic. Yet even this frustrating hindrance was seen in a
positive light when contextualised within the Renaissance conceptions of
knowledge in general and alchemy in particular. Thus Bianchi argues that:
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It is important to note how … the formula of the simultaneous
conversion of visible and invisible, corporeal and spiritual, is used not
only to describe the achievement of the [alchemical] opus, but also the
particular way in which the alchemist imparts his teaching, and the
novice’s hermeneutic effort in approaching it…. To communicate
their truths, scholars had chosen to conceal the spiritual and manifest
it indirectly (per aliud), through something corporeal. Their words are
therefore corporeal and concrete at first sight but spiritual as regards
their hidden core. The novice is required to follow the same path in
reverse: starting from what is corporeal and concrete in the texts, he
moves beyond this to discover their concealed and spiritual teaching
(‘The Visible and Invisible’, 25-26).
Marsilio Ficino harks back to Plato in his discussion of the soul, and he
further stresses the essential obligation man has to achieve knowledge, both
of self and God:
[Plato] considers man’s soul to be like a mirror in which the image of
the divine countenance is readily reflected, and in his eager hunt for
God, as he tracks down every footprint, he everywhere turns hither
and thither to the form of the soul. For he knows that this is the most
important meaning of those famous words of the oracle, “Know
thyself,” namely “If you wish to be able to recognise God, you must
first learn to know yourself” (9).7
7 Yoking together the pagan Plato and the Christian God may seem to be anachronistic, if not anathema, but we are reminded that “Something in Ficino, something in his age, responded to the forged authority of later classical culture, in which … paganism and Christianity appear simultaneously possible” (Kerrigan and Braden, The Idea of the Renaissance, 103).
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But knowing either God or one’s own soul is a tall order, because both are
abstract entities, unyielding to definition and limitation, almost impossible to
comprehend. MacFarlane and Maclean affirm that:
[T]alking about souls is not an easy thing to do. It requires a particular
vocabulary: the vocabulary of what we should now call human
psychology. When Montaigne writes about human psychology (that
is, when he is discussing how human beings perceive, react, interact,
make choices, form habits and so forth) he uses language which the
modern reader may at first find very puzzling (57).
Yet even when we do accept Montaigne’s idiom, it is difficult to find an
explicit or confident explication of the nature of the soul, or of knowing. It
might therefore be understandable if modern readers – and even early
modern readers, for that matter – baulk at the seeming pessimism implied in
the following passage from Montaigne’s Essays:
Cicero says that philosophising is nothing more than preparing for
death. That is as much as to say that study and contemplation in
some sort withdraw our soul outside of us, and keep it occupied apart
from the body, and this is a kind of apprenticeship and resemblance
to death; or perhaps, that all the wisdom and reason in the world
converge in one point, to teach us not to fear death (‘That to
Philosophize is to Learn to Die’, Bk I, Chap. 13, 75).
This rather bleak assessment – almost futility – of the nature and purpose of
philosophy is intensified in Montaigne’s more particularised reflection in his
essay ‘Of Experience’:
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So in the matter of ‘knowing oneself’, the fact that every man is so
cocksure and self-satisfied, and thinks he knows enough about
himself, shows that he does not know himself in the least…. I, who
make no other profession, find in myself such infinite variety and
depth, that the only result of my learning is that I feel how much I
still have to learn (Bk III, Chap. 13, 552).8
But Bouwsma cautions readers of Montaigne not to equate scepticism and
despair. Thus, “For [Montaigne] the insurmountable limitations of the
human condition and ‘the consciousness of our ignorance and weakness’
severely restrict what can be known. He thought scepticism the only
plausible philosophy for ‘living, thinking, reasoning man’” (39). But this
scepticism does not preclude the pursuit of knowledge, neither is it an
endorsement of resignation to ignorance:
Montaigne, himself a lawyer, although doubting everything else, had
no doubts about the workings of his own mind and concluded that
truth was relative to his own conception of it and that it might even
vary from moment to moment…. All of this, he observed,
complicated but also pointed to the importance of self-knowledge,
individual and collective, in human relations (Bouwsma, 41).
While a number of pre-eminent scholars of the period – I would include
both Jonson and Machiavelli in this category – seemed to concur with the
sceptical estimation of man’s potential for self-knowledge, there were those
who embraced a more hopeful outlook. The preface to Sir John Davies’s
poem on The Original, Nature, and Immortality of the Soul, offers a means of
8 “To know oneself, Montaigne seems to be suggesting, one has to catch oneself unawares” (MacFarlane and Maclean, Montaigne, 65).
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access into the uncharted territory of the soul and a possible means of
bringing the abstract into the material world:
But as others have labour’d to carry out our Thoughts, and to
entertain them with all manner of Delights Abroad; ’Tis the peculiar
Character of this Author, that he has taught us to meditate upon our
selves; that he has disclos’d to us greater Secrets at Home; Self-
Reflection being the only Way to Valuable and True Knowledge,
which consists in the rare Science of a Man’s Self … and by knowing
himself thoroughly, he is arriv’d to know much; which appears in his
admirable Variety of well-chosen Metaphors and Similitudes, that
cannot be found in the compass of a narrow Knowledge (A6r).9
Sign as Knowledge
The idea that meditation and self-reflection are aided by the use of
‘metaphors and similitudes’ may be expounded by reference to Agrippa’s
discussion of the ‘Seals and Characters of Natural Things’:
All stars have their peculiar natures, properties, and conditions, the
Seals and Characters whereof they produce, through their rays, even
in these inferior things, viz., in elements, in stones, in plants, in
animals, and their members; whence every natural thing receives,
from a harmonious disposition and from its star shining upon it,
some particular Seal, or character…. Every thing, therefore, hath its
character pressed upon it by its star for some particular effect…..
And these Characters contain and retain in them peculiar Natures,
9 The above title is used for the first time in 1697 (London: W. Rogers). The earlier editions have the title ‘Nosce Teipsum. This oracle expounded in two elegies 1. Of humane knowledge. 2. Of the soule of man, and the immortalitie thereof’ (London: R. Field for J. Standish, 1599).
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Virtues, and Roots of their Stars, and produce the like operations
upon other things, on which they are reflected (Occult Philosophy, 110-
111).
It is only by recognising and deciphering these ‘characters’ or signatures that
one can hope to access the hidden virtues and benefits of natural entities.
Moreover, it follows that if ‘every natural thing’ bears the imprint of a
supercelestial idea or image, then man, too, can be known by various
observable correspondences. Therefore Anderson notes that “Elizabethan
psychology is … a science which involves a knowledge of the relation of
man to the macrocosm” (4). Agrippa himself intimates as much:
Therefore, leaving those things which are to be found out in plants
and stones, and other things, as also in the members of divers
animals, we shall limit ourselves to man’s nature only, which, seeing it
is the most complete Image of the whole Universe, containing in itself the
whole heavenly harmony, will, without all doubt, abundantly afford
us the Seals and Characters of all the Stars and Celestial Influences,
and those, as the more efficacious, which are less differing from the
celestial nature (111).
There is a significant rapport between Agrippa’s theory and the Paracelsian
conception of knowledge. Central to both theses is the idea that knowledge
is negotiated through the interpretation of signs, reading into and beyond
what is immediately available to the senses, and accessing the hidden
meanings beneath the surface of things. Bianchi likens this epistemological
model to early modern notions of alchemy:
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In fact the alchemist’s work becomes the very same laborious
procedure followed by anyone, in any domain, who conceives of the
goal of knowledge as constituted by what is both masked and
revealed by the object of immediate perception, that is, by anyone
who pursues knowledge through the interpretation of signs. When
considered from this standpoint alchemy appears related to every
philosophical view that does not see the task of knowledge as ending
with the passive reception of what is offered externally, but goes on
to take this datum as the sign, symbol or cipher of something else,
which must be arrived at by a more or less difficult path (‘The Visible
and Invisible’, 27).
Alchemy, then, can be understood as an analogy for the process of knowing
and as a metaphorical pattern for a Renaissance psychology. The reading
and interpretation of signs or ‘ciphers’ necessarily implicates the imagination
in the process of learning in order to know10. Many Renaissance scholars
defended the application of the imagination in the pursuit of knowledge.
Indeed, Copenhaver argues that “In psychology and philosophical medicine
the imaginative faculty of the soul and its spiritual junction with the body
were topics of long-standing importance” (‘Translation, Terminology and
Style’, 288). MacFarlane and Maclean make a similar point: “imagination, in
traditional psychology, was the part or faculty of the soul which made
mental images, and hence was closely related to memory” (62).
Knowledge and Imagination
The theory of the efficacy of the imagination is particularised by Montaigne:
10 The particular significance of the imagination in relation to drama will be further explored in the chapter on The Tempest.
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A powerful imagination begets the thing itself, say the clerks. I am of those
who feel the strong arm of imagination; everyone is struck by it, and
some are knocked down…. I do not wonder that imagination brings
on fevers and death in those who give it free hand and encourage it
(‘Of the Power of Imagination’, Bk I, Chap. 21, 91).
Although he seems to admit to a personal susceptibility to the power of the
imagination, he goes on to suggest that it is the unlearned and low-born who
are most prone to submission to the influence of the imagination: “It is
likely that miracles, visions, enchantments, and the like extraordinary
phenomena derive their credit chiefly from the power of imagination, acting
principally on the more impressionable minds of the common people. Their
credulity is so easily imposed upon that they think they see what they do not
see” (93).11
The power of the ‘imaginative faculty’ was certainly brought to bear upon
the language, instruments, and practices of alchemy. These could be seen as
an intricate and profound system, echoing the various processes of the
human psyche. Croll expounds on the power inherent in the imagination,
and further links it to alchemical philosophy, which draws on the theories of
the sentient universe and the macrocosm-microcosm interaction:
The Imagination can produce whatever we see with our eyes in the
greater world; thus by Imagination … all hearbs, all growing things,
all mettalls may be produced…. A vehement Imagination doth not
onely cause a transmutation of one’s own body, but sometimes also
of anothers (‘The Great and Deep Mysteries’, 72-73).
11 While this judgement might seem somewhat derisive, it nonetheless resonates with Jonson’s depiction of the gulls in The Alchemist, which will be further analysed in Chapter Six of this thesis.
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Agrippa seems to have a similar opinion of the imagination with regard to
its psychological application:
So great a power is there of the soul upon the body, that whichever
way the soul imagines and dreams that it goes, thither doth it lead the
body…. Now, how much imagination can effect the soul no man is
ignorant, for it is nearer to the substance of the soul than the sense is,
and therefore acts more upon the soul than the sense doth (Occult
Philosophy, 199-200).
But imagination, although abstract and hard to define, must be based on
something concrete or experiential. Consequently, alchemists, scientists, and
natural philosophers, amongst others, insisted on the importance of
observation and personal experience. Although not an occultist, Montaigne
does offer an important contemporary perspective on the relationship
between cerebral knowledge and practical experience:
Reason and education, however much we may be inclined to put our
faith in them, can hardly be powerful enough to guide us to action,
unless we, over and above, exercise and train our mind by experience
to go the way we wish; otherwise, when it comes to actual deeds, it
will no doubt find itself at a loss. That is why those among the
philosophers who have striven to attain to some greater excellence
have not been content to await, in tranquil security, the rigours of
Fortune, lest she should take them unawares, fresh and
inexperienced, in the battle of life, but rather have gone out to meet
her and purposely come to grips with difficulties (‘Of Preparation’,
Bk II, Chap. 6, 357-358).
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Knowledge and Experience
Writing within a rather different paradigm, Paracelsus addresses his
exhortation to action to physicians in particular, although one may
extrapolate his rationale to a more general emphasis on empiricism:
The right path does not consist in speculation, but leads deep into
experience. From experience the physician receives his help, and
upon it rests all his skill. He must have rich knowledge based on
experience…. Your eyes, which take delight in experience, are your
masters; for your own fantasies and speculations cannot advance you
so far that you can boast of being a physician…. Therefore study
each day without respite, investigate and observe diligently
(Archidoxes, 55, 57).
Pinnell’s marginal note in his translation of Croll is significant in this
respect, especially if we keep in mind the theoretical and practical overlaps
between science and the occult during this period. Thus, “Experiment, as
also judgement, without knowledge is but fallacious difficult and fortuitous,
but with Science it is true and infallible.” (80).12 The semantic overlap
between ‘experiment’ and ‘experience’ was an accepted commonplace that
obtained during the middle ages up to the latter part of the eighteenth
century. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath articulates this axiom in the prologue to her
tale, where she emphasises the close relationship between personal
experience and knowledge:
Experience, though noon auctoritee
Were in this world, is right ynogh for me
To speke of wo that is in marriage
(III [D] 1-2). 12 It is important to note that ‘science’ at this time was used to refer to ‘exact knowledge’, almost undifferentiated with regard to subject matter.
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In the ‘Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, Chaucer suggests that ‘auctoritee’, or certain
knowledge of a subject, is supported by ‘deed’ or experience:
By God, men may in olde bookes rede
Of many a man moore of auctorite
Than evere Caton was, so moot I thee,
That al the revers seyn of this sentence,
And han wel founden by experience
That dremes been significaciouns
As wel of joye as of tribulaciouns
That folk enduren in this lif present.
Ther nedeth make of this noon argument;
The verray preeve sheweth it in dede.
(VII [B²] 2974-2983).
The primary sense of the verb ‘experiment’, then, includes ‘experience’. In
light of this, ‘experiment’ presupposes the attempt to put to the test,
through personal experience and observation, various theories and
conceptions in order to find out and establish the truth of a matter, and to
come to a clear understanding of that matter.
Of course, this raised immense difficulties for those scholars who were
committed to the study of the psyche, or ‘soul’, of the human individual.
However, these difficulties were not considered insuperable. In keeping with
the Paracelsian conception of knowledge, the invisible or hidden depths of
the human psyche could be accessed by metaphorically peeling away the
material layers in which the soul is cocooned. This, of course, calls to mind
the alchemical practice of separation, in which the visible shrouds around
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natural things are gradually removed to reveal the hidden virtues and powers
contained within. Bianchi explains: “It was through a process of separation
and individuation, a scheidung analogous to the work performed by an artist
on a block of wood, that each thing acquired its precise contours and was
made visible” (20).
The following explanation by Fludd provides a useful insight into the
Renaissance conception of psychologia as the study of the human soul. The
way in which he relates this to alchemical knowledge is especially significant:
The wiser sort of Alchymists, do make the Soul a certain infinite
nature, or power in all things, which doth procreate like things of
their like: for this nature doth engender all things, yea, and
multiplieth, and nourisheth, or sustaineth them: and they also style it,
the Ligament, or bond of the elements, since by it they are fastned together
with the Symphoniacal accords of peacable harmony (Mosaicall
Philosophy, 146, original italics).
It is thus in understanding nature, as consisting of ‘the elements’ in various
combinations, that one can approach unto a clearer vision of the soul of
man. This is essential, because man was considered not only to epitomize
the universe in miniature, but also to be the ‘bridge’ or ligament between the
celestial and the terrestrial. Paying homage to the Paracelsian method of
attaining knowledge, Croll states that:
[O]thers far more excellent and more truly deserving the name of
Philosophers investigate the Arcana and more secret things of Nature,
they go into the very inner roomes and Sanctuary of Nature, and have
the true knowledge and Experience of Nature’s Light, which maketh
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a true Phisition indeed…. But first, as Paracelsus saith, let him be the
legetimate INTERPRETER of NATURE, who alone searcheth out
its œconomy, and the universall latitude thereof, prying into all the
Species and kinds of all the Creatures that may by themselves be
known, and then comes to consider and looke into man (‘The Great
and Deep Mysteries’, 128-129).
Fludd engages a very similar attitude:
As for Man, there is such a super-eminent and wonderfull treasure
hidden in him, that wise-men have esteemed, that the perfect wisdom
of this world, consisteth in the knowledge of a mans self, namely, to
find out that secret mystery, which doth lurk within him. For man is
said to be the center of every creature, and for that cause he is called
Microcosmus, or the little world: Centrum & miraculum mundi, The center or
miracle of the world, containing in himself the properties of all creatures,
as well celestiall as terrestriall (Mosaicall Philosophy, 215).
Macrocosm/Microcosm: Types and Shadows
The cosmos, it was believed, is constructed according to types and shadows,
where invisible entities are bodied forth in their analogues in the visible
world13. Close observation of outward nature and particular consideration of
how it might reveal the inner workings of human nature were therefore
advocated as ways of accessing the soul or psyche. Fludd explains that “the
character of the inward man is deciphered and pourtrayed out in the
outward man, no otherwise, that we may judge of the fashion of the sword
by the scabbard, or the kernell by the shell” (215). 13 Brian Vickers points out that analogy and correspondence were characteristic features of the “mental habits of the occult sciences” (‘The Function of Analogy’, 266).
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Indeed, Cicero invokes the authority of antiquity in his recommendation to
follow the methods of the sages and philosophers of ancient times, for
“with these began the succession of all those who devoted themselves to the
contemplation of nature and were held to be and named wise men” (432).
Bianchi provides insights into the seminal nature of both the theory and
exercise of this principle of contemplation:
[S]ince an exact isomorphism of structures connects worldly beings
and phenomena which are distant from one another, it follows that
the knowledge of what is concealed and impossible to grasp directly
may be obtained from its more perspicuous and evident cosmic
analogues, that the invisible may therefore be read in the visible, the
internal in the external, and the distant in the near. Thus the
phenomena of the external world become the model on which to
base an understanding of the more enigmatic phenomena that occur
in man…. Everything regarding the microcosm is therefore learnt
indirectly through its signs in the macrocosm (‘The Visible and
Invisible’, 29).
However, one may ask what exactly is to be contemplated in the external
world if the object of the exercise is to come to a clearer understanding of
the human soul or psyche. After all, the soul is invisible and nebulous with
regard to the five physical senses through which we normally access the
world. Agrippa attempts to address this very question in his analogous
formulation of the nature and ‘structure’ of the soul, by recasting the
doctrine of the four elements. Thus, “In the Soul itself … the understanding
resembles fire, reason the air, imagination the water, and the senses the
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earth” (54). Fludd contributes a more detailed description of the soul in his
Mosaicall Philosophy:
The soul is an intellectual Spirit alwaies living, alwaies in motion, and
in respect of its divers operations in the body, it hath divers
appellations assigned to it: For it is called Life, in regard of its
vivificative and vegetative property. It is called a Spirit, as it is
conversant about contemplation, and, is a spirituall substance: and
breatheth in the body; it is called sense, as it is imploied about the Act
of sensation; it is termed Animus, when it operateth in Knowledge
and Wisdome; and it is named Mens, in regard of its divine
understanding: and Memory, as it doth remember (150).
This outline of the soul provides a certain focus to one’s contemplation.
Cicero provides further practical guidelines to accessing and applying this
central theory of the cosmic ‘echoes’ between the great and little worlds,
“For the man who reflects upon nature, upon the diversity of life and the
weakness of humanity, is not saddened by reflecting upon these things, but
in doing so he fulfils most completely the function of wisdom” (267).
Montaigne provides an even more trenchant judgement about knowledge as
the product not only of reflecting upon one’s ignorance, but actually
embracing it:
The share we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is, has not
been acquired by our own powers…. We are therein assisted by the
weakness more than by the strength of our judgement, by our
blindness more than by our clearsightedness. By means of our
ignorance, more than our knowledge, do we become wise…. It is not
to be wondered at if our natural and earthly powers are unable to
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conceive that supernatural and heavenly knowledge; let us bring to it
nothing of our own but obedience and submission…. Yet must I
consider, in fine, if it be in the power of man to find what he seeks,
and if this search he has been making for so many centuries has
enriched him with any new power and any solid truth. I think he will
admit, if he speak in all conscience, that all he has gained by his long
pursuit is to have learned to acknowledge his own weakness. The
ignorance which was naturally in us we have by long study confirmed
and verified (‘Apology for Raymond Sebond’, Bk II, Chap. 12, 495-
496).
Once again, Montaigne’s scepticism might be mistaken for resigned
defeatism, yet it is significant that he begins this long and influential essay
with the rather blunt observation: “Knowledge is truly a great and very
useful acquisition; they who despise it bear sufficient witness to their
stupidity” (428). By now, we have come to accept that Montaigne pulls no
punches, but not everyone subscribed to this sort of audacity. Cicero, for
example, presented a more coaxing approach, as he explained the purpose
of the pursuit of knowledge through observation and contemplation:
“Human nature, if properly examined, has in itself all means of calming the
soul, and in order that a distinct image of it may be discerned more easily,
the general conditions and law of life must be clearly explained” (399).
Knowing one’s self, then, is contingent upon observation of all that is
external to the self. Yet self-knowledge in turn provides the basis for true
wisdom and understanding of the world around one. Thus Croll argues that
“He that knoweth not himselfe cannot have any true intrinsicall and
essentiall knowledge of things, but like a bruit beast, what he knows without
him, shall remaine without him” (48). Self-knowledge, therefore, may be
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seen as an interactive process of discernment and is available to all who are
willing to contemplate seriously the powerful relationship between
macrocosm and microcosm. Croll explains:
Man, the bond or buckle of the world, the last wonderfull and
honourable living creature was … formed of the most excellent
Compound and purest Extract of the whole World, out of the Center
of all Circles…. In respect of the Body or corruptible Nature [Man]
bears the Image of the great, sensible and temporall World; In respect
of his soul or immortal Nature, he bears the Image of the Archetype
or originall copy and patterne of the world, that is, of the Immortall
Wisdome of God himselfe (‘The Great and Deep Mysteries’, 54-55).
Fludd’s association of intellectual wisdom with the soul of man coincides
with Croll’s description, and reinforces the concept of the coexistence
within man of the human and the divine. In his discussion of ‘Philosophy in
generall’, Fludd begins this ‘book’ by arguing that, unlike the erroneous and
deceptive philosophy of the Ethnics, those influenced by Aristotle and
Galen, truth is contained within and is to be searched out from:
[The] bottomlesse abysse of the essentiall Philosophy, whose main
foundation is the true Wisdom, (the which is a thing so difficil (sic) to
be put into execution, that nothing but the swift and nimble-winged
soul, or spirit of man, is able to bring it to effect) (Mosaicall Philosophy,
9).
Again, reference to Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations provides further insight
into the nature of this wisdom, which is “a sound condition of the soul,
[while] unwisdom on the other hand [is] a sort of unhealthiness which is
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unsoundness and also aberration of mind” (235). This clearly associates
mind and soul, and Cicero goes on to argue that the healthy and wise soul is
evidenced in the right and discerning use of reason (243).
Adam: Heir of Knowledge and Power
In the first book of his Occult Philosophy, Agrippa extends the conception of
reason to include natural magic, which is:
[A] faculty of wonderful virtue, full of most high mysteries,
containing the most profound contemplation of most secret things,
together with the nature, power, quality, substance and virtues
thereof, as also the knowledge of whole Nature, and it doth instruct
us concerning the differing and agreement of things amongst
themselves, whence it produceth its wonderful effects, by uniting the
virtues of things through the application of them one to the other
(34-35).
According to alchemical writings of the time, the most momentous act of
uniting was performed by Adam in the Garden of Eden when he named all
the animals God brought before him. The occurrence of this story in so
many different esoteric works suggests its immense significance in the
Renaissance conceptions of both alchemy and wisdom. After a detailed
discussion on the ‘Occult Virtue of Words’ in his Occult Philosophy, Agrippa
explains the occult significance of Adam’s act of naming,14 his
14 Haydn draws attention to the synchronous relationship between language and occult power: “These three requirements – astrology; the use of language, to read the Cabalistic and other occult literature, and to understand and pronounce ‘sacred names’; and alchemy – correspond very neatly to the generally approved three realms of magic: the Celestial, Divine and Natural respectively (188).
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comprehensive knowledge of the natural world, which made this act
possible, and the possibility of reclaiming this occult power:
Adam, therefore, that gave the first names to things, knowing the
influences of the Heavens and properties of all things, gave them all
names according to their natures, as it is written in Genesis, … and as
he named any thing, so the name of it was; which names, indeed,
contain in them wonderful powers of the things signified. Every
voice, therefore, that is significative, first of all signifies by the
influence of the celestial harmony; secondly, by the imposition of
man…. But when both significations meet in any voice or name,
which are put upon them by the said harmony, or men, then that
name is with a double virtue, viz., natural and arbitrary, made most
efficacious to act as often as it shall be uttered in due place and time
(209, 210).
Philip C. Almond points out that Adam’s perfect knowledge set him apart as
the crown jewel of God’s creation. This wisdom was not merely abstract
‘intelligence’, but was the wellspring of his power and dominion over nature
itself. The true alchemists and natural philosophers had as their ultimate goal
this superlative and consummate knowledge (44). Lancelot Andrewes, in his
Apospasmatia Sacra, emphasises the efficacious interaction of language,
learning, and occult power:
Adam was the first that practiced Contemplation, and the first that
practiced Eloquution … and the first … that gave proper, fit and
significant names and words to express the natures of things, and hee
was not only the father of all the liberal Sciences, but also of
mechanical Arts … by all which we briefly see the perfection of his
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minde, and the excellency of his gifts with which he was endowed: So
that Adam then must needes be granted to bee the first and chiefest
Author of all Knowledge and Learning that ever since, in all ages of
the world hath beene among men, for from him it was derived and
spread abroad among his posterity, into all parts of the world (208).
Croll distinctly links Adam’s perfect knowledge to the alchemical processes
of separation and amalgamation, those core activities in the great quest for
the universal panacea or philosopher’s stone. He further expands on
Andrewes’s suggestion that the practical wisdom of Adam was not entirely
effaced by the Fall, but, rather, is available to those adepts who devote
themselves to the search for the truth of man’s nature and being:
Adam who was full of wisdome and the perfect knowledge of all
Naturall things, and many more of his time … did attaine to so many
ages, not by Nature and property of Time, for then all had been
Long-liv’d, but by the help of Secrets and by Wisdome which was
revealed but to a few, and by speciall knowledge which God gave
them in this particular, whereby they lengthned out their life to so
many years beyond the ordinary time that men live. Many holy men
used this universall Medicine before the flood, which Adam also had
in his Family … which strengthneth the Internall Balsam, and like
Fire congregateth Homogeneous things, and segregateth
Heterogeneous, which are of a contrary nature…. Wherefore we want
nothing but the knowledge of Secrets, and their use. And thus the
Flood did not wast the things that grow, but wash’d away our
wisdome of knowing them. These most secret of secrets have ever
been his from the common sort of them that professe Phylosophy,
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and especially since men began to abuse Wisdome, using it to an ill
end, which God bestow’d upon them for health and advantage (218).
Natural philosophy, in its broadest sense encompassing both the theoretical
and experiential aspects of alchemy, may be seen, then, as an attempt to
unearth the secrets with which Adam was au fait, but which were obscured
by the Fall, and to re-establish the divine wisdom which would ensure
‘health and advantage’ to all.