no-
THE INFLUENCE OF SENECAN STOICISM
ON MILTON'S"PARADISE LOST
Gerald J. Stacy
A Dissertation
Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
December 1972
BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY . 54 0332 ìi
A S’
ABSTRACT
As a Christian humanist Milton was influenced by a two-fold cultural experience, the classical and the Christian. However, critical studies of Milton's Paradise Lost usually confine themselves to elucidating the Christian aspects of the work rather than the classical. This study attempts to reverse that process by investigating the influence of Senecan Stoicism on Milton's Paradise Lost.
The Stoic ethics which Milton learned while studying Virgil, Seneca and Cicero as a youth very much influenced him in the writing of Paradise Lost. This is true in spite of the fact that doctrinally Milton's exegesis of the Fall of man in Paradise Lost relies heavily on Saint Augustine's interpretation of the Fall in Books XII and XIII of the City of God, which had grown throughout the history of the Church into the standard interpretation of the Fall of man. Not the least of Milton's artistic achievements in Paradise Lost is his ability to reconcile two seemingly irreconcilable ethical systems. Therefore this study focuses on the interplay between Augustinian and Stoic ethics in the epic. Three aspects of Adam and Eve's ethical life are investigated. These are Adam and Eve's prelapsarian perfection, their mortal sin, and their repentance from sin. The methods employed in the investigation of these areas are contrast and analysis. Any deviation which Milton may make from the standard Augustinian interpretation of the Fall is explained in terms of classical Stoic ethics. For example, Milton doctrinally follows Augustine in his presentation of man's unfallen nature. The Adam and Eve of Paradise Lost obviously possess the super natural gift of grace and the preternatural gifts, freedom from death and pain. Moreover, they exhibit the integrity of mind which Augustine claims for Adam and Eve. However, Milton departs from the Augustinian tradition in his description of Adam and Eve's predisposition to sin. Where Augustine finds this predisposition rooted in the will, Milton describes it as a gradual weakening of the reason. The difference between these two conceptions of man's predisposition to sin lies in Milton's,Stoic rather than Augustinian concept of right reason. This same Stoic concept of right reason naturally colors Milton's interpreta tion of the Fall itself and Adam's repentance and regeneration after sin. In both instances Milton demonstrates that he is not an Augustinian voluntarist but a Stoic rationalist.
The results of the analysis carried out in this study demonstrate that Milton was perhaps more influenced by classical ethics in this interpretation of the Fall of man in Paradise Lost than scholars have heretofore believed. Milton fits into the mainstream of Renaissance thought which believed that Cicero's De Officiis ranked with the gospel of Christ as an ethical document. '' \ HI
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION ...... 1
CHAPTER
I Milton and Right Reason ...... 10
II Prelapsarian Perfection ...... 51
III The Fall and Its Effects...... 90
IV Repentance and Regeneration ...... 122
BIBLIOGRAPHY 158 INTRODUCTION
Maud Bodkin is one of numerous scholars who contend that Milton's
mind was fashioned by a twofold cultural experience--the classical and
the Hebraic-Christian.1 Many scholars have tried in a general way to
measure the extent of this cultural experience on Milton's mind,2 while
others have confined themselves to a discussion of either the classical3
or the Christian.4 The present study attempts to analyze one facet of
that cultural experience--the influence of Senecan Stoicism on Milton's
Paradise Lost.
Surprising as it may seem, no one has attempted an analysis of
Paradise Lost to determine to what extent Milton was influenced by
Stoic ethics in his interpretation of the Fall. There are, it seems to
me, two very good reasons why this subject has not as yet been treated.
The more important reason is that Paradise Lost was written by a Christian
in the seventeenth century, and as such it was most certainly influenced by Saint Augustine's exegesis of the Fall, which had dominated Christian thinking for a full twelve centuries. Since the ethics of Saint
Augustine and the ethics of classical Stoicism appear at first glance to
^-Archetypal Patterns in Poetry (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 262. 2See especially Douglas Bush, The Renaissance and English Humanism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1939), pp. 101-134. 3For example, Herbert Agar, Milton and Plato (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1928). 4For example, C. A. Patrides, Milton and the Christian Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966); Kathleen Hartwell, Lactantius and. Milton (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1929).
1 2
be totally irreconcilable, one would naturally assume that Augustinian
influence would preclude Stoic influence. A second reason one would not
expect studies of this nature is that there seems to be a disagreement
among scholars concerning what actually constituted Stoic influence on
the Christian humanist movement during the Renaissance.5 -These two
factors must be explained in more detail.
Books XII and XIII of Augustine's City of God had grown throughout
the history of the Church into the standard interpretation of the Fall
of man.6 Even Thomas Aquinas sought to explicate Augustine’s doctrine
of the Fall rather than to change that doctrine.7 Later, Scotus,
Calvin and Luther emphasized Augustine's voluntarism and maintained an
interpretation of the Fall which was derived from and very much
dependent on his interpretation. Although strongly accepted in the
sixteenth century, Augustine's view of the Fall began to give way before
a more optimistic picture of man in the seventeenth century,8 A conflict
arose between the emerging view which emphasized man's power to rise from the Fall to a state closely approximating his unfallen state and the traditional Augustinian view that man's first sin resulted in an evil will which left him morally paralyzed in regard to good actions.
The ambivalent nature of the situation can best be illustrated by examining the furor which resulted from Jeremy Taylor's reinterpretation of the Fall.
5Hiram Haydn, The Counter-Renaissance (New York: Harcourt, Brace § World, 1950), p. 55. 6J. M. Evans, Paradise Lost and the Genesis Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 93. 7Amy Violet Hall, "Milton and the City of God," Diss. Washington University 1940, p. 115. 8Anne Davidson, "Innocence Regained: Seventeenth-Century Reinter pretations of the Fall of Man,” Diss. Columbia University 1956, p, 18. 3
In 1655, only twelve years before the publication of Paradise Lost,
Jeremy Taylor published his Unvm Necessariura: or the Doctrine and Practice
of Repentance Describing the Necessities and Measures of a strict_, a. Holy,
and a Christian Life, and Rescued from Popular Errors in which he
offered a doctrinal interpretation of the Fall of man which was contrary
to what he considered Augustine's very pessimistic analysis. According
to Taylor, the "precepts of holiness might as well be preached to a wolf
as to a man, if man were naturally and inevitably wicked."9 Taylor was
immediately censured by the Bishop of Rochester, who complained that he should not have contradicted Saint Augustine, who is "so full and clear in his assertions, that his works and reasons will require...more strict weighing of them."10 When Taylor's contemporaries condemned him as a
Pelagian, he was forced in 1656 to bring out a defense of his work in which he maintained that he was not actually attacking Augustine but
Calvin, the Synod of Dort and the Westminster assembly. However, the
Anglican Church continued to believe that he was really attacking
Augustine, who was as highly revered by Anglicans as he was by Calvinists.
Taylor himself complained that "nobody dare take Augustine's view to task unless he wishes to be attacked by the ignorant and the jealous, all the envious and some of the learned."11 In seventeenth-century
England, then, one can notice a paradoxical attitude toward Augustine's interpretation of the Fall. On the one hand, Augustine's interpretation was beginning to be questioned by theologians, while on the other hand, no theologian, either Protestant or Anglican, would dare to "interpret
9Quoted in "Innocence Regained," p. 135. 10Quoted in "Innocence Regained," p. 33. 1 Quoted in "Innocence Regained," p. 134. 4
the doctrine of the Fall without at least appearing to follow Augustine."12
It is in this atmosphere that Milton wrote Paradise Lost.
As several studies of Paradise Lost have successfully demonstrated,
Milton does more than simply "appear" to follow Augustine's interpreta
tion of the Fall.13 In regard to doctrinal matters, there are many
areas where Milton follows Augustine rather closely. However, he, like
the other Christian humanists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
considered doctrine to be secondary to the individual's pursuit of
virtue in an active Christian life guided by reason.14 This emphasis
on man's ability to perfect himself through the use of reason is in
direct contrast to the Augustinian belief that man was a creature of
will unable to control his desires except through the grace of God.
The Christian humanists' optimistic belief in the power of man's
reason did not come to them through the Christian tradition but was
part of their classical heritage. Whether or not the ethical principles
derived from this belief in reason as the source of man's moral life
were primarily the result of Stoic influence on the period is a matter
of disagreement among scholars. Hiram Haydn thinks that "the prevalence
in the period of at least two major kinds of Stoicism" is partially responsible for this disagreement.15 When speaking of Stoic influence, scholars most often think of the systematic attempt to dogmatize
Stoicism which was begun in the fourteenth century by Justus Lipsius
JZDavidson, p. 64. 13See especially C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 66-72 and Peter Amadeus Fiore, "The. Influence of Augustine on Milton's Works," Diss. London 1960. 14Hall, p. 115. 15The Counter-Renaissance, p. 55. 5
and Guillaume du Vair. This type of Stoicism found its way into popular
drama, and other than there had very little influence on Renaissance
thinking.15 Unfortunately, scholars usually overlook another kind of
Stoicism which was not dogmatic and is therefore far more difficult to
trace in the period. Nevertheless, this latter Stoicism-had a far greater
ethical influence on the period than the former did because it was
solidly rooted in the educational system. The writings of Cicero, Cato,
Plutarch and Seneca not only taught every English schoolboy his Latin but also taught him a Stoic system of ethics which was widely looked upon as the ethics which had prepared man for Christianity:
It is to this second tradition, this second sort of "Stoicism," that the majority of the great Reneassance humanists, Christian or "Christian," belonged.1*8 *
Milton, as the last great Christian humanist, most assuredly belonged to this Stoic tradition. Since Milton read the Roman Stoic moralists as part of the grammar school curriculum, he does not mention this reading in his commonplace book which was kept during the Horton period.19 However, Donald Clark notes that the works of Seneca and most of the Roman moralists were in the library at Saint Paul's school while
Milton was a student there:
The books would not have been bought for the school library if the boys were not studying the authors represented.20
iSHerschel Baker seems to fall into, the error here described by Hiram Haydn. See The Image of Man (New York: Harper, 1961), pp. 293-312. 17Haydn, p. 55.
19See James Holly Hanford, "The Chronology of Milton's Private Studies," PMLA, XXXVI (1921), 251-314. •^John Milton at St. Paul's School (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948), p. 118. 6
Moreover, Clark contends that of all the Latin authors studied, the one
most admired and most imitated was Cicero. English schoolmasters
"believed that only the most excellent should be imitated, and that
since Cicero was most excellent, then only Cicero should be imitated by
whose who would speak and write excellent Latin."2201
Cicero, however, was read not only for his Latin but also for his
ethical precepts. Haley Steward Thompson explains that it was impossible for the schoolboy to escape studying Cicero's ideas along with his
Latin because every "schoolmaster was convinced that Cicero was the best source of moral and ethical doctrine there was, and he would hardly let his pupils remain untutored in this all important field of study."22
Thompson cites as an example of his contention Roger Ascham's letter to the Countess of Pembroke wherein Ascham contends that Cicero's De
Officiis ranks with the gospel of Christ.23 In his treatise "Of Education"
Milton himself advocates the young student's reading Seneca, Cato, Varro and Cicero.
I propose to demonstrate in this dissertation that the Stoic ethics which Milton learned as a youth very much influenced him in the writing of Paradise Lost. This is true in spite of the fact that doctrinally
20 Ibid. , p. 155. 22"Milton and Cicero," Diss. Yale 1947, p. 29. Since Cicero's philosophy is eclectic, there has always been some controversy over whether or not he can be classed with the Stoics. E. Vernon Arnold, Ronan Stoicism (London: Routledge § K, 1958), p. 30, maintains that one of the major characteristics of Roman Stoicism is its eclecticism; therefore he lists Cicero among the Stoics. Frederick Copleston, History of Philosophy (New York: Image, 1962), Vol. I Part II, p. 163, perhaps comes the closest to solving the problem when he suggests that although Cicero was eclectic in matters philosophical, in ethics he "was inclined to agree with the Stoics..." 22Ibid. 7
Milton's exegesis of the Fall of man in Paradise Lost does follow the
Augustinian tradition. Not the least of Milton's artistic-achievements
in Paradise Lost is his ability to reconcile two seemingly irreconcilable
ethical systems. In order to focus on this interplay between Augustinian
and Stoic ethics in the epic, my method will be to a large extent
comparative. I will concentrate primarily on any deviation which Milton
may make from the standard Augustinian interpretation of the Fall and
show how that deviation can be explained in terms of classical Stoic
ethics.
For example, in the second chapter of the dissertation I shall take
up Milton's delineation of prelapsarian perfection. Basically Milton
follows Augustine in his presentation of man's unfallen nature, The
Adam and Eve of Paradise Lost obviously possess the supernatural gift
of grace and the preternatural gifts, freedom from death and pain.
Moreover, they exhibit the integrity of mind which Augustine claims for
Adam and Eve. However, Milton departs from the Augustinian tradition
in his description of Adam and Eve's predisposition to sin. Where
Augustine finds this predisposition rooted in the will, Milton describes it as a gradual weakening of the reason. The difference between these two conceptions of man's predisposition to sin lies in Milton's Stoic rather than Augustinian concept of "right reason."
In the third chapter I will discuss Milton's depiction of the Fall in Book IX of Paradise Lost. Where Augustine considers the Fall a sin of pride--"inordinate exaltation" of the will, Milton sees it stoically.
Man's reason, weakened by a series of faulty judgments, finally gives 8
way to error. An extensive analysis of Adam's sin will show that even
though Milton follows Augustine in his belief that Adam fell through
"social compulsion" (City of God, XIV.11), his description of that event
parallels Seneca's analysis of sin in his epistles, and the sin itself
is a perfect example of what Seneca calls "effeminacy of mind" (Ep,,
LXXXXII.2).
In the fourth chapter I will treat the regeneration of Adam and Eve
as Milton describes it. Where Augustine does not go into detail
concerning this event, Milton does. He only pays lip service to the
Augustinian belief that fallen man can do nothing good by himself. For
Augustine, every good act performed by man following Original Sin is a
result of God's grace working within him. Milton's fallen Adam, on the
contrary, proves himself worthy of God's grace before that grace is
given to him. In the same way that Milton's Samson does, Adam regenerates
himself by resisting yet another temptation from Eve when she tries to
convince him that their best course of action is to frustrate God's
justice through suicide. It is only after Adam resists this temptation
that Milton speaks of God's grace removing "the stonie from thir hearts."
The Stoic ethical system which underlies Paradise Lost cannot, of
course, be understood without some knowledge of the very basic differences which exist between the Augustinian and Stoic attitudes toward man and his relationship to God. In both ethical systems man's nature is defined by his relationship to God, and man's knowledge of that relationship is described by both systems as wisdom. At this point, however, all similarity ceases. The Stoics believed that man could become wise by
living in accord with his right reason, while Augustine believed that 9
wisdom was an infused gift from God. In the first chapter of this dissertation, I shall demonstrate Milton's belief that man gained wisdom by living a life founded on right reason. I MILTON AND RIGHT REASON
An investigation into Milton's concept of right reason must begin
with a definition of the term and a brief historical sketch of its
development. Robert Hoopes says that the concept "has been invoked
variously in the history of Western thought as a rational concept, a
moral principle, and a human faculty. It denotes in other words, a
mode of knowing, a way of doing and a condition of being."1 Broad as
this description of the term is, it does reveal one important fact.
Right reason is a principle which attempts to account for both how man
knows and how he acts upon ethical principles. Therefore right reason
cannot be neatly summarized by the term reason because reason itself is
only a faculty of the intellect while right reason is concerned not only
with knowing but also with how knowing is translated into moral
activity.
The concept of right reason is not a static principle. Subtle
changes occurred in the idea as it developed during the classical period.
However, the most definitive change occurred when this originally
classical concept was taken over by Christianity. It was at this point
that it changed from a human faculty to a particular mode of knowing.
This change can be explained in terms of the deep dichotomy between the classical and Christian concepts of wisdom which underlie the term.
^Right Reason in the English Renaissance (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 1.
10 11
Since it is impossible in a paper of this scope to give a complete
summary of the classical theories of wisdom, let us be content with
Herschel Baker's statement that throughout the development of classical
ethics the same humanistic view is always present; that is, "the
intrinsically human personality must be regarded as embracing all such
subordinate 'parts' as reason, desire, will and sensation; that a proper
balance of these parts is essential to man's well being; that virtue is
the functioning of man's complicated organism in its most successful and
varied aspects under the domination of reason."2* As Baker makes clear,
classical wisdom consisted in no preparation for an otherworldly
existence but rather in living a life of "well being" on this earth.
Furthermore, the good life could be achieved only if man allowed his highest.faculty, his reason, to dominate his lower faculties and regulate his conduct. The life lived according to reason was the virtuous life. This, says Baker, is the apogee of classical humanism.3
As the classical period drew to a close and the decay of Roman morals signaled inevitably the decay of the Roman empire, the optimism concerning the power of man to perfect himself by living a life of reason, the very backbone of classical ethics, began to disintegrate.
This disintegration was hastened by the rapidly spreading power of
Christianity. The new ethic was at first not entirely hostile to the old. Clement of Alexandria, one of the most important of the ante-
Nicean church fathers, believed that there were "so many elements of truth discernible in Greek philosophy that it may be considered to have
¿The Image of Man (New York: Harper, 1961), p. 104. 2Ibid. 12
been, under the guidance of God, a preparation for the gospel among the
heathen."4 Clement says:
Philosophy, being the search for truth, contributes to the comprehension of truth....But if philosophy contributes remotely to the discovery of truth, by reaching, by divine essays, after the knowledge which touches close on the truth, the knowledge possessed by us, it aids him who aims at grasping it, in accordance, with the Word, to apprehend knowledge.5
In essence, the ante-Nicean fathers saw salvation as a cooperative effort between man and God. Man could achieve human perfection and lead a good life by living a life of reason, but human perfection alone was not good enough to attain salvation. A man could be saved only through God's divine life in his soul. This divine life, called grace, was a free gift of God which man prepared himself to accept by living as perfect a human life as he could. God gave of his grace freely, but in order to be disposed to accept it, man had to be as humanly perfect as possible. 3 if"
What might be called the ante-Nicean compromise between classical and Christian ethics came to an abrupt end with the Council of Nicea in
381 A.D. The heretofore accepted principle that man's reason was the one sure guide to the living of a moral life because it could know the good was suddenly accepted no longer:
The assumption of Classicism...had been that there was, in nature an exact equi
” 4Ford Lewis Battles and Andre Malan Hugo, Calvin's Commentary on Seneca's de Clementia (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), p. 47. 50uoted by Amy Violet Hall, "Milton and the City of God," Diss. University of Washington 1940, p. 44. 13
valence between being and knowledge.... With its doctrine of the trinity, Christianity denied this assumption. The Trinity could not be known by any sort of knowledge. The starting point for thought and action therefore must remain forever invisible to the eye of the flesh. Thus for all men without exception, the question of primary importance was not so much their capacity for thinking as the presup position which governed their thought. And from this standpoint, faith in the God of revelation was proposed as indispensible to full understanding. The Deity was not the object of, but the basis for experience.5 *
At the Council of Nicea, says Herschel Baker, "Christ the God-man
annihilated man's proudest possession, his capacity for rational knowl
edge. Christ as mediator relieved man of responsibility for his
conduct. The Socratic dictum was overturned and virtue was made faith."7
Thus the Council of Nicea paved the way for a new type of wisdom. It
was not by reason that man could lead the good life but by a recognition
of his own inherent weakness in the eyes of the Creator, Therefore, in
order to lead even a naturally moral life, man must throw himself on
the mercy of God and hope for God's grace to save him from himself. With
this wisdom the term virtue was no longer used to describe the active
pursuit of goodness but the. passive avoidance of sin which came into
man's life not only from outside sources but also from man's nature
itself, which was inclined toward evil. In the words of Augustine,
"What is the life of virtue save one unending war with evil inclinations,
and not with solicitation of other people alone, but with evil
6Charles Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 238. yThe Image of Man, p. 157. 14
inclinations that arise within ourselves and are our very own."8
Original sin was thought to have so vitiated man's nature that human
perfection could not be attained on this earth.
At this point Christianity sought to condemn classical philosophy
and ethics, on the one hand for teaching that it was possible to perfect
oneself with merely human reason, and on the other for seriously
believing that there was any other truth besides the Christian faith.
These remarks of the post-Nicean church father Hilary give ample testi
mony of the new spirit: "Steadfast faith rejects the vain subtleties
of philosophical enquiry; truth refuses to be vanquished by these
treacherous devices of human folly, and enslaved by falsehood."9
Classical ethics and philosophy, which had in the writings of the ante-
Nicean fathers prepared man for faith, became in the writings of the post-Nicean fathers the "vain subtleties" which led him away from
faith.10 It is in the teachings of Saint Augustine that the post-Nicean conceptions of wisdom and right reason manifest themselves most clearly.
In dividing the ante-Nicean and post-Nicean church fathers into
Alexandrians and Augustinians respectively, Ford Lewis Battles says that
Augustine turned his back on the classical civilization in which he had been bred, and fought to "free himself and the church, from its power and its blandishments. For the inner man there is nothing of substantial value in all of classical antiquity."11 In the City of God Augustine
QCity of God, trans. Gerald G. Walsh et al. (New York: Image, 1958), XIX.4. All subsequent quotations from the City of God will be identified in the text. 90uoted by Hall, p. 44. 10Cochrane explains it thusly "there was an irreconcilable opposition between the claims of Christ and those of the world. Speculation when applied to faith can only result in the weakening of faith" (p, 226). 1^Calvin 's Commentary, p. 48. 15
condemns every major philosophical sect but the Platonists.12 All of
them "sought for human good either in man's body or in his mind or in both
[and] did not think they had to search outside of man to find it"
(VIII.8). Because in their pride the pagan philosophers worshipped the
human faculty of reason, they tried to turn God into an image of man.
Augustine quotes Paul to the effect that they were "vain in their
reasonings" and fools who professed to be wise (City of God VIII.10).
Such an attitude is not without its own peculiar kind of irony, for as
Hershel Baker notes, Augustine was the most philosophical of all the
church fathers, and yet he poured the most scorn on classical philosophy.13
The irony which Baker speaks of is particularly noticeable in the
Augustinian concepts of wisdom and right reason. In both instances
Augustine borrows classical concepts and uses them for very unclassical purposes. For example, he goes to the Stoics for his definition of wisdom as "rerum humanarum divinarumque scientia" (the knowledge of things both human and divine), but he alters the Stoics' original meaning by splitting the definition into two parts, "'sapientia'...an intellectual cognition of eternal things and 'scientia' a rational cognition of temporal things."14 Augustine then minimizes "scientia," referring to
12In his last work, The Retractions, Augustine makes up for this oversight by repudiating all Platonic influence on his work: "I have been rightly displeased too, with the praise with which I extolled Plato o-r the Platonists or the Academic philosophers beyond what was proper for such irreligious men, especially those against whose great errors Christian teaching must be defended." The Retractions, trans. Sister Mary Inez Bogan in The Fathers of the Church, ed. Roy Joseph Deferrari (Washington: Catholic University Press, 1968), p. 10. 13The Image of Man, p. 138. 14Eugene F. Rice, The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), p. 5. 16
it as the wisdom of the world; and God, he says, has made foolish the
wisdom of the world. The active pursuit of virtue accomplished through
reason is impossible because man is so weak from original sin that he
cannot "be wise of himself, but needs to be enlightened by Him of whom
it is written: all wisdom is from God."15 "Sapientia" is the only
gateway to true happiness, and God is the object of "sapientia." However,
God is also the giver of "sapientia" as well as its object. "One
becomes wise not by any natural light but by an illuminated participation
in the divine light."16 Augustine refers to this wisdom as a "knowing
ignorance" for two reasons.17 First, it is knowledge which comes
directly from God and cannot be achieved by man alone. "It is that
wisdom which is created."18 Secondly, it is a.wisdom by means of which man recognizes his own weakness as a fallen being in relation to the
power of God:
But great as is the difference between the Light which brings light and that light which is brought, just so great is the difference between the Wisdom which creates and that which is created, even as there is between justice that justifies and justice that is brought about by justification. (Confessions XII.xv.20)
What man discovers by means of wisdom is "how incomprehensible is that which he is seeking."19 Thus man finds joy in his own littleness and
1^Enchiridion, i.1-3, quoted by Rice, p. 8. 15Rice, p. 13. 17”There is in us as it were a knowing ignorance, an ignorance taught by the spirit of God which comes to the help of our weakness" (Epistle CXXX.xv.28), quoted by F. Edward Cranz, "Saint Augustine and Nicholas of Cusa in the Tradition of Western Christian Thought," Speculum, XXVIII (Apr., 1953), 310. 1^Confessions. of Saint Augustine, trans. John K. Ryan (New York: Image, 1960), XII.xv.20. All subsequent quotations from the Confessions of Saint Augustine will be identified in the text. 19£>e Trinitate, xv.2. Quoted by Cranz, p. 309. 17
in his own inability to understand. The less he understands, the more
he becomes willing to throw himself on the grace and mercy of God, without
Whom he can do nothing.
Augustine contrasts Christian wisdom with that of the pagans by
saying, "There is, then, a kind of lowliness which in some wonderful
way causes the heart to be lifted up, and there is a kind of loftiness
which makes the heart sink lower" (.City of Cod XIV. 13). All the errors
of classicism, says Augustine, stem from that one heinous error that man
can find wisdom by using his own reason.20 It is this belief in worldly
wisdom rather than in lowly wisdom which has caused men to become proud
and puffed up and has led them into sin.
As one would expect, Augustine's concept of right reason is very
closely allied to his concept of wisdom. Since "there is in the mind
no knowledge of God except the knowledge of how it does not know him,"21
God must give man all knowledge concerning Himself and His laws. Right
Reason therefore becomes the knowledge of principles which God places
in the hearts of men. For this doctrine, which makes the knowledge of
God's law innate, Augustine borrows the Platonic belief that learning
consists in recollection of the forms. Man learns God's law by intro
spection because God has instilled within man all that He wants man to
know. Those who are too busy with the cares of the world to look in
themselves for what God has put there will be wretched in their search
for happiness. Thus Augustine calls his Lord, "Master of Mind and
Memory," and he prays, "Behold, how far within my memory have I traveled
20Cochrane, p. 419. 21Quoted by Cochrane, p. 408. 18
in search of you, My Lord, and beyond it I have not found you!” (Confessions
X.xxiv.35).
Again, using classical terms, Augustine calls the process by which
man finds God's law within himself "intellectual understanding"
(Confessions III.vi.ll). Even though this statement sounds classical
because of its emphasis on the intellect, Augustine means something
quite different by the term "intellectual understanding" than the
classical moralists do. Augustine is not talking about man's reasoning
process when he uses the term but about the revelatory insight God gives
man into the truth.22 He points this out himself in the City of God
when he says that the Christian God does not speak to men as the pagan
gods do:
He speaks by means of truth itself, and to all who can hear with the mind rather.than the body. For, He speaks to that part of man which is most excellent and which has nothing superior to it except God Himself...that part of him which transcends those lower faculties which he has in common even with the beasts. (XI.2. My italics)
Augustine's interpretation of man's intellect as an organ for hearing rather than discovering the word of God is completely alien to classical ethics. As anyone knows who has read both Augustine's Confessions and the
Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, it. is Augustine's belief that moral truth should be sought by introspection rather than by the rational activity which makes the Confessions read like a record of a moral struggle while the Meditations sound like a textbook on morality.
Since Augustine makes right reason into a mode of knowing rather
22Cochrane, p. 385. 19
than a rational faculty, the question naturally arises concerning
Augustine's views on the faculty of reason itself. If God gives man
all the knowledge which is necessary for him, what is the function of
man's intellect? Reason, Augustine, argues, has value only as an adjunct
to faith. "Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to
understand that thou mayest believe, but believe that thou mayest under
stand."2223 Faith, then, precedes reason. Once man firmly believes, then
God will give him the grace to become knowledgeable about what he believes.
This concept of reason as the handmaiden of faith marks a complete anti thesis to classical philosophy and classical ethics.24 As Jacques
Maritain points out, it allows Augustine "to go the whole way with faith.
Intelligence becomes no more than the knowledge of infused wisdom extended over all the possible field of human exploration."25
One last question remains to be answered concerning the Augustinian concept of right reason. How is man's innate knowledge translated into moral activity? The answer is as one would expect. Man, whose will has been weakened by original sin, may know the truth which God has imparted to him, but he himself is powerless to act on that truth:
Just as our flesh does not live by its own power but by a power above it, so what gives to a man the life of blessedness
22"Commentary on the Gospel of St. John," xxix.6. Quoted by Etienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York: Charles Scribner's § Sons, 1938), p. 19. 24This doctrine is in fact such a radical departure from classical principles that Jacques Maritain in contrasting the metaphysics of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas points out that in a classical sense Augustine's theology is so introspective that he cannot be said to have had any metaphysics at all. The Degrees of Knowledge (New York: Charles Scribners f Sons, 1938), p. 368. 25Maritain, p. 366. 20
derives not from himself, but from a power above him. (City of God XIX.25) ■
Augustine feels that it is out of the realm of possibility for man by
any knowledge or by any acts of his own to achieve even human perfection.
Man owes any perfection he might achieve to the grace of God operative
in him:
It is because God is ruling us that our soul is turned into spirit that no longer yields to itself for its own ill but so orders us that our peace goes on increasing in this life until, when perfect health and immortality have been given us, we shall reign in utter sinlessness and in eternal peace. (City of God XV.6)
Since it is by spirit and not by reason that we are ruled, "we owe all
our victories to God, and we must say with Saint Paul: 'thanks be to
God who has given us the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ'"
(City of God XXII.23).
Even though God is responsible for all our victories, He is in no way responsible for any of our defeats. Since God guides man's mind to an understanding of the proper relationship between himself and the Deity, any sin on the part of man is not a misjudgment or error of the reason but a deliberate turning away from God. Augustine explains this kind of activity by replacing the classical belief that reason was the distinguishing characteristic of the human personality with the theory that the distinguishing characteristic was man's will. Whether he is discussing prelapsarian man or postlapsarian man, Augustine sees all the faculties of the soul as dependent upon the will. Not even "the mind 21
is moved until it wills to be moved."26 Thus the will is the efficient
cause of all human activity, including the activity of sin. It is this
emphasis on the will which causes Augustine to see all sin as the result
of pride or "inordinate exaltation," as he is fond of calling it. Sin
is never the result of error or deception. Man knows innately what is
right and good because God has planted the knowledge of Himself and His
law in man's heart.27 When a man sins, he wills to do that which he
knows is wrong in order to satisfy himself. "The will does not fall
into sin," says Augustine, "it falls sinfully" (City of God XII.8). The haughty will defies the reason, which innately knows the good and
deliberately chooses an inferior creature over its creator.
Of all the classical ethicists, Augustine found the most fault with the Epicureans and the Stoics. Oddly enough he saw little difference between these two schools. The Epicureans, he contends, may have made pleasure the very center of man's activity, but the Stoics were just as sensual in their outlook, for they tried to make man's "sense-rbound reason" into a God. According to Augustine then, even while professing to be "curbing the desires of the flesh," the Stoics were actually
"living according to the flesh" (City of God XIV.2). This comment is illustrative of the tremendous split between the Augustinian and Stoic concept of reason. Where Augustine sees reason as just another element of postlapsarian man's corrupt being, the Stoics thought of it as a divine principle in a human body. The dichotomy between these two
2 6£)g Libero Arbitrio, III.i.2. Quoted by Cochrane, p. 446. 27See Augustine's Confessions, I.iii.3. 22
schools of thought becomes especially discernible when one analyzes the
Stoic concepts of wisdom and right reason.
Unlike Augustine, the Stoics tended to emphasize the human aspect of their definition of wisdom as "the knowledge of things human and divine." Therefore, they stressed man's ability to achieve wisdom through his own power rather than through the power of God. However, as the definition implies, the knowledge of human things and the knowledge of divine things are not mutually exclusive as Augustine believed. In man's reason the divine Father has given man an element of His own power.
If man uses this power to guide the performance of his daily actions, he will obtain wisdom.and at the same time aspire to divinity.
This approach to wisdom manifests itself quite clearly in the writings of Seneca. In order to define wisdom he sets up an equation among the terms wisdom, philosophy and virtue. Wisdom is to philosophy as philosophy is to virtue. Just as wisdom is the goal of philosophy and philosophy the means to achieve that goal, so is philosophy the goal of virtue and virtue the means to achieve that goal.28 According to this way of thinking, philosophy can be dropped out of the equation, making wisdom the state of mind resulting from the practice of virtue.
Since virtue is defined as natural activity regulated by reason (Seneca,
Ep. lxxxix.14), so wisdom will be the intellectual state of man resulting from his regulation of human activities according to reason.
2 8Seneca, Ad Lueilium EpistoZae Morales, trans. Richard Gummere (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925), II, Ep. lxxxix.7-8. All subsequent references to Seneca's epistles will be identified in the text. 23
Because of the close connection he sees between wisdom and moral
action, Seneca often refers to wisdom as an art (Ep. xxix). Seen in
this context Stoic wisdom is not puffed up and proud as Augustine
describes it. Indeed, Stoic wisdom is described by Cicero as "simple
wisdom."29 Seneca explains this concept when he says wisdom teaches
that man should not seek after the knowledge of everything in the universe
but only that knowledge which will make him a good man (Ep. lxxv.39).
True wisdom is not ingenious but concerns simply the art of living well
(Ep. xc.12). Furthermore, this kind of wisdom is not given to man by
God. God gives man the power to be wise, but he leaves it to man to
earn wisdom by his own virtuous actions. "The most precious and noble
characteristic of wisdom is that she does not advance to meet us, that
man is indebted to himself for her” (Seneca, Ep. xc.2). The gods give
man life, Seneca goes on to say, but the living of life guided by
wisdom is left completely up to man.
Just as with Augustine, the Stoics' concept of right reason is
clearly a development of their concept of wisdom, However, in contrast
to Augustine, who saw right reason as the knowledge of principles which
God places in the hearts of'men, the Stoics saw it as a process whereby man uses his reason to perform moral actions and thereby discover the
laws by which God runs the universe. God does not teach us directly, says Seneca, but gives "us the seeds of knowledge...not knowledge itself"
(Ep. cxx.4). The Stoics believed as Protagoras did that the starting
29Cicero, Academica, I.x.36. Quoted by E, Vernon Arnold, Roman Stoicism (London: Routledge S K, 1958), p. 282. 24
point of all knowledge is sense perception.30 However, unlike Protagoras
they did not believe that all knowledge is therefore relative or even
that it is limited to sensual objects. The universe and every physical
thing in it is governed by a rational God who rules His domain through
reasonable laws. Man has a reason which is capable of using sense
knowledge to discover these laws through its powers of analogy and
deduction (Seneca, Ep. cxx.5-6). When the Stoics, therefore, say that
man's reason is a spark of the divine, they mean that man's reason
performs the same function as the divine reason, not that it has been
infused with knowledge by the divine. Man's reason does not contain
all knowledge; man's reason is the tool to gain knowledge.
As we have seen, desirable knowledge was limited by the Stoics to
ethics rather than speculation. One of the causes for this limitation
of knowledge is that man's mind has been made in the image of the
divine reason (Seneca, Ep. lxvi.12), and the divine reason itself is
not concerned with speculation but with ordering, governing and creating.
It is by virtue of this close identity between the divine and the human
reason that Marcus Aurelius refers variously to his and the divine
reason as the Pilot, the King, the Lawgiver, the Controller and the
Governor.31 God, says Seneca, is the first cause; he is "Creative
Reason" (Ep. lxv.13).
30£. Vernon Arnold contends that the Stoics believed that only the wise man possessed any innate knowledge, and the content of that knowledge was limited to the belief that God exists and that he rules the universe by providential laws, p. 138. For a similar view see Edwyn Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics (Cambridge: Heffer, 1965), p. 35. 31Arnold, p. 246. 25
Man's reason, when it is focused on the living of an ethical life,
becomes right reason:
Reason is equal to reason as one straight line to another; therefore virtue also is equal to virtue. Virtue is nothing else than right reason. All virtues are reasons. Reasons are reasons, if they are right reasons...as reason is, so also are actions. (Seneca, Ep. lxvi.32)
This kind of reason, Seneca goes on to say, is achieved not by birth,
not by art, not by nature but by rigorous training and self-discipline
(Ep. xc.44).32 Cicero agrees, pointing out that the living of a
virtuous life depends on man's achieving self-control.33 On the same
subject, Marcus Aurelius says that "the art of living [wellj has more
resemblance to that of the wrestler than to that of the dancer, inasmuch
as the chief requisite in both is the power of standing firm.1'34
Accordingly, man learns the divine law not by intellectual speculation
on the nature of the universe, not by searching the depths of his own
soul, but by living a disciplined virtuous life--that is, by choosing
immediate ends on reasonable grounds in his everyday activities. For
example, if a man follows his reason, he will be just to his fellowmen
in everyday situations. In this way he discovers what justice is, and he is then able to learn the meaning of divine justice. Again, if a man follows his reason, he will live a community life because "the good
32See also, Seneca, The Dialogues, IV.x.6. 33This is the underlying premise of Cicero's discussion of decorum in Book I of the De Offieiis. See especially 1.38. 34Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, The Meditations, trans. John Jackson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), vii.64, All subsequent quotations from The Meditations will be identified in the text. 26
of rational life is community" (Meditations of Marcus Aurelius v.16). In
so doing he will come to understand what it means to be a social being.
He will build cities and kingdoms and then make reasonable laws so that
those cities and kingdoms can function according to God's law. Thus it
is man's own right actions performed according to reason which, teach him
the law by which God governs the universe. Even the laws man makes come
as a result of his living the law. As Cicero says, "True law is right
reason in agreement with nature... . Whoever is disobedient is fleeing
from himself and denying his human nature,- and by reason of this very
fact he will suffer the worst penalties.”35 So it is that learning
becomes a moral activity. In the words of Seneca, "Philosophy is the
end of virtue; virtue is the means to philosophy" (Ep. lxxxix.8).
There are three important results of the Stoics' identification of
virtue and right reason. First of all, since the Stoics consider the
judgment which underlies an action to be part of the performance of the
action, they make no distinction between reason and will. Cicero points
this out in De Finibus:
Whereas in conduct, when we speak of an act as wise, the term is applied with full correctness from the first inception of the act. For every action that the Wise Man initiates must necessarily be complete forthwith in all its parts; since the thing desirable, as we term it, consists in his activity...actions springing from virtue are to be judged right from their first inception, and not in their successful completion.35
35Pe Republica, iii.22. Quoted by C. A. Patrides, Milton and the Christian Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 80. 35Z?e Finibus Bonorum et Malorvm, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914), II.ix.32. All subsequent quotations from De Finibus will be identified in the text. 27
Consequently, the Stoics use the terms reason and will interchangeably
in their literature and in effect do away with the concept of will
altogether.37 All good actions proceed from man's reasonable judgments:
"All virtues are reasons," says Seneca, just as all bad actions are the
result of unreasonable judgments. -
The second result is that because man learns by performing virtuous
actions, his reason grows in power with each virtuous action performed,
while at the same time each defection from reason weakens it. Seneca
explains the latter process by saying that a man's mind becomes
"womanish" by degrees (Ep. lxxx.ll). The more a man fails through lack
of self-discipline to make reasonable judgments and therefore to act
reasonably, the harder it becomes to make reasonable judgments, until a
man finally reaches a stage when he becomes absolutely incapable of
judging reasonably. Seneca often refers to this state as "effeminacy
of mind," because a man in this state is letting himself be guided by
his emotions rather than by his reason. However, if a man perseveres
in the practice of self-discipline so that he performs his daily duties
according to reason, then "reason grows like a seed. It is not large
to the outward view, but increases as it does its work" (Ep. xxxviii.2).
That it is oftentimes very difficult to practice the self-discipline and control which is necessary to help the reason grow in stature is
3"For a discussion of this concept see Arnold, p. 247. One of the problems with Bevan's introduction to Stoicism in Stoics and Sceptics is that he puts undue emphasis on Stoic will, pp. 28ff. This allows him. later in the book to make a distinction between the Stoics, who emphasize man's will, and the Sceptics,' who advocate taking a highly rational approach to every problem. Bevan's error consists in applying post-Augustinian terms to pre-Augustinian. ethics. 28
not considered an unfortunate fact of man’s existence by the Stoics. On
the contrary/Seneca says- that it is a wonderful privilege to have the
weaknesses of a man together with the ability to achieve the serenity of
a god in spite of those weaknesses (Ep. liii.12). Such a state is the
very stuff of life. "If you have nothing...which will test your
resolution,... if you recline in unshaken comfort, it is not tranquility;
it is merely a flat calm." Seneca quotes Demetrius to the effect that
such a life is a "Dead Sea" (Ep. lxvii.14).
The third important result of the Stoics identification of virtue
and right reason is that sin becomes the result of error or misjudgment.38
Cicero explains how right reason should work when one is making a valid
j udgraent:
A just decision can...only be delivered by Reason, with the aid in the first place of that knowledge of things human and divine, which may rightly claim the title of wisdom; and secondly with the assistance of the Virtues, which Reason would have to be mistress of. (De Finibus IT.xii.37)
If reason is not the mistress of virtue but is instead guided by the
passions or emotions, then it will make mistakes, and these mistakes
are sins. Marcus Aurelius says, "Men's sins are not sins of will"
(Med. iv.3) but a "swerving through force of passion from the dictates of reason" (Med,, ii.5). This swerving from the dictates of reason is
considered by the Stoics to be mistaken judgment because when a man
lets passion overcome his reason, he is judging that particular passion to be of more value than it really is. In order to sin, man must be
38For a more detailed explanation.of this principle see Bevan, p. 103. My explanation is somewhat indebted to his. 29
deceived about the true nature of the good, for if he were not deceived
he would follow the good. Epictetus points to this very strongly in his
Discourses: "They are thieves and pilferers. What do you mean by
thieves and pilferers? They are in error concerning good and evil....
Do but show them their error, and you will see that they will amend their
faults." Epictetus goes on to say that "the most valuable thing to every
one is a.right judgment in choosing." If a man is incapable of making
right judgments, he is in error; he is not malicious. Therefore one
should, "Pity him...do not be angry; nor say as many do, 'What! shall
these execrable and odious wretches dare to act thus?'"39
This quotation from the Moral Discourses brings out another
interesting point concerning the Stoic belief that sin is error. If man
sins by making mistakes, he can be taught what is right. In fact the
natural ability of man to learn virtue is perhaps the greatest cause for.
Ciceronian optimism concerning the nature of man. Cicero asserts that
man has an instinct to be taught which surpasses even his instinct for
self-preservation (De Finibus V.xviii.49). Given the premise that man
has a natural desire to learn and the premise that sin is error, then
certainly man must be the most perfectible of beings.
Despite the Christian doctrine of original sin, the classical belief in man's natural perfectibility continued to survive as an under
current in Christian thought until it finally surfaced during the
Christian humanist movement of the Renaissance. Augustinianism too underwent a revival in the sixteenth century,' and because of it,
l^Moral Discourses, Enchiridion and Fragments, trans. Elizabeth Carter (New York: Dutton and Co., 1957), I.xviii.l. 30
Augustine (though the thought of such a thing would have been abhorrent
to him) became the spiritual father.of the Protestant Reformation.
Luther and Calvin not only adopted Augustine's basic beliefs but also
carried them to the logical conclusions which Augustine was not quite
prepared to accept. For example, Luther emphasized Augustine's doctrine
of mystical illumination. "Like Augustine, whom he revered and quoted
endlessly, Luther insisted on the necessity of divine illumination flooding the soul of the worshipper: all else was vain.... The true
Christian is passive before his God, relying wholly on his faith for his salvation."110 Calvin too had his favorite Augustinian doctrine, the doctrine of original sin which had so vitiated man's nature that he could not hope for salvation unless he had been elected to it by God.
Thus Calvin thought of "God as unconditioned will, contingent upon nothing and least of all upon reason. In consequence, man suffered a terrible reduction to the sinful and guilty object for the working of
God's inscrutable will."111
Because of man's spiritual condition, wisdom in Protestant Reform?- ation theology became "a gift of God and the result of no human effort or learning. It is revealed knowledge of divine things understood in an explicitly Christian sense."112 Scripture is the immediate source of wisdom; divine illumination, the secondary source. "Wisdom, there-? fore, comes only from God; it can be known only by faith, not by reason; and it is a product of divine illumination. [Luther saysj 'illumination consists in faith in what is revealed, which, is our wisdom. "|Ll3 This
1+0Baker, p. 315. 1+1Baker, p. 317. ll2Rice, p. 130. 43Ri.ce, p. 131. 31
concept of wisdom further intensifies the Augustinian concept of lowly
wisdom. "The condition of wisdom is ignorance, full consciousness of
being a fool, the absence of all intellectual pride, and the knowledge
that man, of himself, can never be wise."44 * *
The Protestant reformers went one step further than Augustine in
degrading man's reason. Whereas Augustine made reason the handmaiden
of faith, the fideists regarded reason as having been so entirely
corrupted by original sin that it was literally powerless. As Calvin
says,
the mind of man is so entirely alienated from the righteousness of God that he cannot conceive, desire or design any thing but what is wicked, distorted, foul, impure and iniquitous....Therefore, since reason, by which man discerns between good and evil, and by which he understands and judges, is a natural gift, it could not be entirely destroyed, but being partly weakened and partly corrupted, a shapeless ruin is all that remains. 5
Because of such an attitude, any discussion of the concept of right reason among the Protestant reformers becomes purely academic. As
Robert Hoopes points out, the fideists’ only relationship to right reason was to attack it, which they did on two fronts. First, by rejecting the traditional humanistic conviction that salvation is in some sense the reward of human effort, they repudiated freedom of the will. Secondly, by claiming that human nature was completely corrupted by the Fall, they denounced the validity and worth of man's rational
44Rice', p. 135. ^Institutions, ii.19. Quoted by Hiram Haydn, The Counter^ Renaissance (New York: Charles Scribners, 1950), p.,416. 32
powers as well as the efficacy of his moral acts.1+5 Hoopes goes on to
say that Calvin's belief in a God of absolute will destroys the whole
concept of natural law on which the doctrine of right reason depends.47
Since man can know neither God nor His law, he is powerless to choose
between right and wrong. He is an abject and outcast creature, without
free will, without any power to help himself, with nothing but the hope
that God may have predestined him to salvation.
It is perhaps ironic that both the Augustinian fideistic and the
classical humanistic approach to man's nature and his relationship with
God should begin their resurgence at approximately the same time in history. However, it is even more ironic that these two approaches so ideologically different were finally merged in the works of a single individual--John Milton, who was at one and the same time a Puritan and the last great Christian humanist.48 However, Milton was not able to merge these traditions without some very great restructuring of the former. As Hiram Haydn points out, Christian humanism, from its very inception, was accented on the second word rather than on the first.
Thus, in the ethics of all the Christian humanists, the sharp distinc tions between theology and philosophy became obliterated, leading these humanists to a natural religion.49 Douglas Bush describes this process in Milton's life when he says that "Milton's classical humanism sets him apart from merely religious puritans and leads him to interpret the regenerate state in humanistic, that is, rational and ethical terms."50
^Right Reason in the English Renaissance, p. 99. ^7Ibid. , p. 108. 48Douglas Bush, The Renaissance and. English Humanism (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1939), p. 101. >J,^The Counter-Renaissance, p. 42. 50The Renaissance and English Humanism, p. 115. 33
Basil Willey explains that Milton attempted to "reconstruct protestant
doctrine in terms of a humanistic ethic...[He had] so far emancipated
himself from Calvinistic theology as to believe that there is a godlike
principle in Man, and that that principle is to be found in the Reason."51
What Willey calls Milton's emancipation from Calvinistic theology could perhaps be better termed his compromise between fideistic and classical
Stoic ethics. However, as we shall see in studying Milton’s concepts of wisdom and right reason, this compromise is heavily weighted toward the classical Stoic position.
Milton defines wisdom in the Christian Doctrine as an intellectual virtue "whereby we earnestly search after the will of God, learn it with all diligence, and govern all our actions according to its rule,"52
Two points should be especially noted concerning this definition. The first is that even though Milton calls wisdom an intellectual virtue, he makes that intellectual state dependent upon the performance of right action. This marks a departure from the fideistic belief which sees wisdom as an intellectual state dependent solely upon faith. Secondly, like the Stoics, Milton sees wisdom resulting from man's own endeavors rather than from infused knowledge granted by the deity. This is made clear by Milton's explanation of the phrase "earnestly searched" in his definition of wisdom. "Wisdom," he says in a. statement reminiscent of
Seneca, "is readily found of such as seek her, and discloses, herself to
fT-The Seventeenth-Century Background (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), p. 243. 52Frank Allen Patterson, ed., The Works of John Milton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934), XVII. 27. All subsequent quotations from Milton's works will be from the Columbia Edition and will be identified in the text. 34
them of her own accord1’ (C.E. XVI1.29).
It could perhaps be argued that even though Milton thinks of wisdom
as a virtue, his definition is not adverse to Augustinian theology because
Augustine also believed that man should search for wisdom. God's wisdom
has been implanted in man's heart, so man should search there to find it.
However, Milton says nothing about seeking wisdom through introspection.
Instead, he ties the virtue of wisdom to the virtue of prudence, calling
them the two intellectual virtues (C.E. XVII.27). "Prudence is that
virtue by which we discern what is proper to be done under the various
circumstances of time and place" (C.E. XVII.37). This linking together
of wisdom and prudence in the same category as intellectual states
dependent upon moral activity is reminiscent of Cicero's belief that the
virtue of decorum is allied to wisdom, for decorum "is at the root of
every good action"53 and leads man so well in harmony with nature that
"if we take her as our guide, we shall never go wrong, but will pursue
what is by nature wise and true" (De Officiis I.xxviii.100).
Milton's classical identification of wisdom and right action leads
him to a definition of lowly wisdom which is Stoic rather than Augustinian.
The Augustinian concept of lowly wisdom did of course make its way into
Puritan.theology. Man through tireless self-examination finally comes
to the recognition of his lowly stature in the eyes of God. Jonathan
Edwards describes this recognition process in his own life:
53Cicero, On Moral Obligation, trans. John Higginbotham (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), I.xxviii.98. All„subsequent quotations from De Offieiis will be identified in the text. 35
When I look into my heart, and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell....And yet it ' seems to me, that my conviction of sin is exceedingly small, and faint; it is enough to amaze me that I have no more sense of my sin.... I have greatly longed of late for a broken heart, and to lie low before God;.._. it would be a vile self-exaltation in me, not to be the lowest in humility of all mankind....And it is affecting to think, how ignorant I was, when a young Christian, of the bottomless, infinite depths of wickedness, pride, hypocrisy, and deceit left in my heart.54
This, perhaps needless to say, is not Milton’s concept of lowly wisdom.
Irene Samuels begins her explanation of what was Milton's concept by pointing out that Milton's condemnation of learning in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained is not really a condemnation of learning but a statement that "living provides the only desirable context for learning and that learning is desirable only as it finds its context in life."55
In other words, knowledge is valuable because "where no arts flourish, where all knowledge is banished, where indeed there is not trace of a good man, there savageness and frightful barbarism rage about" (Milton,
Prolusion VII, C.E. XII.259), but the only knowledge which is truly valuable is that knowledge which will make a man a better person morally.
Milton makes clear in his pamphlet "Of Education" that the foremost aim of the curriculum is ethical:
The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like
Works, 1.25-26. Quoted by Martin Larson, "Milton's Essential Relationship to Puritanism and Stoicism," PQ, VI (1927), 203. 55"Milton on Learning and Wisdom," PMLA, LXIV (1949), 710. 36
him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true vertue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection. (G.E. IV. 277)
This statement definitely indicates Milton's belief that virtue is the
product of a moral education. Moreover, it is with the belief in mind
that knowledge should be regulated to those things which will help a man
live morally that Adam reiterates Raphael's injunction
be lowlie wise: Think onely what concernes thee and thy being; (P.L. VIII.173-174)
with the words,
That which before us lies in daily life, Is the prime Wisdom, what is more, is fume, Or emptiness, or fond impertinence, And renders us in things that most concerne Unpractis'd, unprepar'd, and still to seek. (P.L. VIII.193-197)
Milton's "lowly wisdom" teaches not how incomprehensible are the ways
of God to man but rather how easily God's ways can be discerned if only
man will study the ways of virtue.
As with the Stoics and with Augustine, Milton's concept of right
reason is heavily dependent upon his concept of wisdom. However, the
question of how man is to determine what the right actions are which
will lead to wisdom is not so easy to answer in the case of Milton as
it is with Augustine or with the Stoics. The reason for the problem of
course is that Milton's position on right reason is a reconcilation of
two traditions which on this particular question come into the sharpest
conflict with each other. As we have seen, Augustine and the fideists
who followed the Augustinian tradition believed that all moral principles were innately printed by God in the hearts of men because, as a result 37
of their weakened natures, men did not possess the power to discern these
principles on their own. The Stoics, on the other hand, held that all
knowledge was the result of sense perception, but that man's mind as an
element of the divine had the power to work through the senses to come
to a knowledge of the principles by which a reasonable God governs the
universe. As we shall see, Milton's attempt to reconcile these two
diverse opinions results in a compromise whereby he draws a distinction
between man who lived under the old law in an unregenerate state and man under the new law. In describing man in the latter regenerate state,
Milton is willing to adopt in modified form the Augustinian position on
"illuminated participation" but unwilling to take away man's freedom to discover God's law through a naturally human intellectual process.
Scholars have had little difficulty recognizing Milton's belief that man's natural reason is to determine right action, Basil IVilley is representative of the prevailing critical opinion when he says,
"Milton... exalts Reason as the godlike principle in man, meaning by this term...the principle of moral control rather than of intellectual enlightenment."55 Some critics, however, claim that Milton believes both that the reason is the principle of moral control and that all moral knowledge is known innately by an intuitive process. Although this position is not quite contradictory, it does, I believe, distort Milton's concept of right reason. Robert Hoopes is representative of this critical opinion. First of all, he points out that for Milton "man is potentially divine, and his most divine faculty is that of reason, whereby he is
^Seventeenth-Century Background, p. 242. 38
enabled to a degree to comprehend the nature and purposes of God himself."57
Then Hoopes goes on to build up a rather surprising and, I think, mis
leading case for Milton's belief in the primacy of intuitive knowledge:
There are in other words, two kinds of knowledge for Milton. First, there is knowledge which is the result of what.he calls "intuition" or "intuitive reasoning"-? the "intimate impulse" whereby God speaks and moves Samson to action; a power that fuses thought and action, and leads Christ into the wilderness....Second, there is knowledge which is the result of discur sive reason, that is, knowledge which depends upon inference from the facts of primary perception and which reason, acting upon these facts, builds into theory and system. It is Milton's settled convic tion that the first of these is both a 'higher knowledge' and a surer guide.... For man's life...intuitive reason is the more steady and reliable monitor. Indeed, without it man finds himself 'in wandering mazes lost.'58
While I cannot argue with the truth of Hoopes' statement, I can argue with the impression that he is trying to create. What he fails to mention in his analysis is that the "intimate impulse" is described by
Milton in the Christian Doctrine as a "special calling...whereby [God] at the time which he thinks proper, invites particular individuals... with a more marked call than others" (C.E. XV.351. My italics). It is appropriate that Samson and Christ who were particularly chosen by God for special tasks should be spoken to intuitively by God. Such divine intervention in. one's life, however, is in the nature of a miracle,
Hoopes gives the impression that all mankind receives this rare type of special, intuitive knowledge, which is simply not the case. On the 57Right Reason in the English Renaissance, p. 189. $&Ibid. , pp. 194-195. 39
contrary, Milton himself points out in "Of Education" that man must as a
fact of the human condition, learn ethical principles by discursive
reasoning:
But because our understanding cannot in this body found it self but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as ? by orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same method is necessarily to be follow'd in all discreet teaching. (C.E. IV.277)
Realizing that all learning begins in the senses, the good teacher will
direct his instructional methods according to the human capacity.
Moreover, just as Raphael and Michael do in Paradise Lost, he will make
his students aware that man's knowledge does in fact depend "upon
inference from the facts of primary perception" and that because of this
basic fact of human nature, man must discipline himself to judge what is
valuable and what is dross in all the knowledge his senses present to
him.
Since man is what he is, Milton readily admits that man by reason
alone cannot discover all that there is to know about God. "No one...
can have right thoughts of God, with nature or reason alone as his guide,
independent of the word or message of God" (Christian Doctrine, C.E.
XIV.31). Man must base his knowledge of the divine on the revealed word of God in Sacred Scripture. Milton explains this in Christian
Doctrine:
The, Gospel is, the new dispensation of the covenant of grace, far more excellent and perfect than the law, announced first obscurely by Moses and the prophets, after wards in the clearest terms by Christ 40
himsgl£, and, his, apostles and .evangelists. written since hx the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers. and ordained to contin ue. even ia the end of the world, containing & nrafflise. e.t.e.rna.L life to. aid in everx nation who shall. believe in Christ when revealed to them, and a threat of eternal death to such as shall not believe. (C.E. XVI.113).
It should be noticed that despite Milton's admission of man's dependence on God's revealed knowledge for spiritual truths, he makes a distinction between the old law, which was obscure even though written down, and the new law, which is written by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of men. In explanation of this distinction, Paul Gibbs quotes Milton's statement in
Christian Doctrine that "in the regenerate, under the influence of the
Holy Spirit, reason is daily tending towards a renewal of its primitive brightness" (C.E. XVI.101). This, says Gibbs, demonstrates Milton's belief that that the faculty of reason in regenerate man is "enlightened by the Holy Spirit." Such a position concerning the power of man's regenerated reason surpasses that of any previous Christian humanist.59
This enlightening process does not mean that the Holy Spirit infuses moral principles into man's reason, but that he gives man the power to understand the law whether it be written in Scripture or in nature.60
Although Milton's belief in what Gibbs calls "mental enlightenment" 59Paul T. Gibbs, "Milton's Use of the Law of Nature," Diss. University of Washington 1938, p. 91. 60Milton's attitude toward innate knowledge cannot be considered unusual in Christian ethical thought, for the more responsibility and freedom the Christian ethicist is willing to delegate to man's reason, the less becomes his need for innate knowledge. Thus Thomas Aquinas holds that man knows innately "certain general principles," but he by no means so knows any "single truth." The Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947), II.xci.3 and xciii.3. 41
may sound like Augustine's belief in "illuminated participation in the
divine light," it is not the same. Augustine believes that God does all
the work.61 God first infuses man with knowledge and then gives him the
power to understand that knowledge. Milton's concept, however, comes
much closer to the Stoic belief that man's reason can understand the law
by which God governs the universe because it is itself an element of the
divine and as such performs the same functions as the divine reason.
The major difference between Milton's and the Stoics' belief is th.e
historical fact of original sin. Since the Stoics had no theory of
original sin, they believed that each man possesses a reason that is
divine in its power to understand and to choose as a result of under
standing. Milton, however, believes that because of original sin man
lost the power to understand and to choose, hence the explicitness of
the old law. The unenlightened man of the Old Testament had to obey the
law as it was written because he had lost the intellectual power to see
beyond the literal law. With the coming of Christ and the new- law, the
Holy Spirit enlightens man's mind so that he once again is capable of
understanding. By "mental enlightenment" then, Milton simply means the
Holy Spirit's restoration of what the Stoics felt was the divine element
in man's reason, that is his power to understand God's law as it is - written in nature and to govern his actions accordingly. As a Christian, the only element Milton adds to this belief is that the law has been written in scripture as well as in nature.
6IThis is, of course, a subject of much scholarly debate. For the opposite point of view see Frederick Copleston, History of Philosophy (New York: Image, 1962), II, pp. 96-101. 42
Ike, Law. o£ Cod. is. exthex writAeii ar_ unwritten. The, unwr.l..ttex law is. no. _o.th.ex than that, law of nature given originally to Adam, and of which a, certain remnant. or imperfect illu mination. still dwells in. the hearts of all mankind.; which, in. the regenerate, under the influence of. the Holy Spirit. is daily tending towards a renewal of its, primitive brightness. . . .The Mosaic Law was a written... code consisting of many precepts, intended for the Israelites alone...to the end that they, being led thereby to an acknowledge ment of the depravity of mankind, and consequently of their own, might have recourse to the righteousness of the promised Savior. (Christian Doctrine, C.E. XVI.101,103)
Thus Milton upholds regenerated man's freedom to act on his own merit.
God has not superimposed the law on man's mind but has written it in
scripture and in nature, and has given man the freedom and responsibility
to interpret the law from these two sources. On this doctrine of
"mental enlightenment" depends Milton's belief in Christian liberty,
whether it be in matters religious or political.
Milton begins his explanation of Christian liberty when he says in
Christian Doctrine that Christ in his ministry came not "to destroy the
law or the prophets;...but to fulfill" (C.E. XVI.141). However, at the
same time that Christ "asserted the permanence of the law" (ibid.), He
asserted a new way in which that law was to be interpreted. In the words of Saint Paul, "Rom.VI.14,15. 'sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law, but under grace'" (C.E. XVI,143).
This new law of grace liberates the Christian from the letter of the law so that he can live according to the spirit of the law. However, the Christian is not only given freedom with his liberation but also new duties. First, he is obligated to interpret the law by the light 43
of his own regenerated reason. To this effect Milton says in Areopagitica.,
A man may be a heretick in the truth; and if he beleeve things only because his Pastor sayes so, or the Assembly so determins, with out knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds, becomes his heresie. (C.E. IV.333)
Secondly, the Christian is obligated to prepare his mind for the making
of correct judgments regarding the law by living a moral life, Milton
says in Of Reformation that
The wisdome of God created understanding, fit and proportionable to Truth the object and end of it, as the eye to the thing visible. If our understanding have a film of ignorance over it, or be blear with gazing on other false glisterings, what is that to Truth? If we will but purge with sovrain eye--salve that intellectual ray which God hath planted in us, then we would beleeve the scriptures protesting their own plainness. (C.E. III.33)
Arthur Barker finds this same principle of Christian liberty permeating all of Milton's prose works, but it is especially evident in The Reason of Church Government where Milton argues that man is not simply to accept the law but to reason from the law because "God's revealed pre scripts are necessarily in accordance with the unchanging principles of right reason."52 Thus it was Milton's belief in Christian liberty which led him to write the divorce tracts and to criticize authority on all levels, for the new law requires man to follow his individual conscience in every sphere of human activity, public or private.
^^Milton and the Puritan Dilemma. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1942), p. 104. 44
In essence, Milton's doctrine of Christian liberty gives to the man
who has shown himself worthy of it the power to live by his ovm conscience.
Such a man's conscience is his only law, for he must use that conscience
to determine the validity of any and all promulgated laws. If this kind
of rational freedom seems unusual for the ordinary puritan frame of mind,
it is no wonder. As Martin Larson points out, one of the results of the
Puritans' conviction that man's reason had been corrupted by original
sin was that they
were particularly zealous in constructing creeds and in compelling all to accept them in toto. The Augsburg Confessions, The Formula of Concord, The Confessions of the Synod, of Dort and The Thirty-nine Articles.... Nothing can more potently, declare Puritan hatred for rationalism and individualism than these dogmatic statements of final and authoritative truth.63
Although Larson oversimplifies the puritan position greatly here by
attributing to all Puritans what was true for only a percentage of them,64 65 his statement does illustrate the extreme position for which Milton had
absolutely no patience. Milton
never in any sense regarded himself as 'the chief of sinners,' nor did he arrive, after a long agony of helpless self-condemnation and self-torture, at a time when suddenly he received refreshment, assurance, and illumination, and heard the sound of voices rushing upon him with the noise of a wind from heaven. He was never the helpless and passive recipient of divine assistance;
63"Milton and the Essential Relationship," pp. 203-204. 64For a more accurate description of the attitude toward natural reason in the Puritan church of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries see C. A. Patrides, Milton and, the Christian Tradition, pp. 83-86. 65Compare with the moment of Augustine's conversion. See Confessions, VIII.xii.29. 45
such support came to him from the studious summing up of 'all his reason and deliber ation. '56
The concept of right reason is for Milton, therefore, the ability of a
mature, rational and free conscience to make judgments concerning the
rightness or wrongness of an action. Thus construed, right reason is
for Milton as it was for the Stoics, an innate faculty, not innate
knowledge.6*7
That by right reason Milton means the ability of a mature conscience
to choose rightly is evident from his discussion of such a conscience in
Christian Doctrine, Areopagitica and The Divorce Tracts. In Christian
Doctrine, Milton identifies conscience with right reason:
The existence of God is further proved by that feeling, whether we term it conscience, or right reason, which even in the worst of characters is not altogether extinguished. If there were no God, there would be no distinction between rj,ght and wrong; the estimate of virtue and vice would entirely depend on the blind opinion of men; none would follow virtue, none would be restrained from vice by any sense of shame, or fear of the laws, unless conscience or right reason did from time to time convince every one, however unwilling, of the existence of God.68 (C.E. XIV.29)
66garker, p. 81. 67Douglas Bush's description of Milton's concept of right reason also stresses this point. He defines right reason "as a kind of rational and philosophic conscience which distinguishes man from the beasts and which links man with man and with God. This faculty was implanted by God in all men, Christian and heathen alike, as a guide to truth and conduct" Paradise Lost in Our Time (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1945), p. 37. 68Milton's belief that right reason consists first of all in a "feeling" that God exists, certainly makes the existence of God a matter of innate knowledge. It should be noted, however, that this does not contradict Stoic belief. See note 30. Moreover, as we shall see, Milton's treatment of Adam's discovery of God's existence demonstrates an equal balance between an innate sense and rational discovery. See chaXn ter II,' io pX . 76-77. 46
That by conscience Milton does- not mean simply a code of innate laws but
an innate faculty is also evident from Christian Doctrine. "By the law
is here meant, in the first place, that rule of conscience which is innate
and engraven upon the mind of man" (C.E. XV.179. My italics). By
proclaiming that the first law for man is the rule of right reason, Milton,
like the Stoics, makes the law into an active principle. The good life
is not the negative life where man seeks to avoid transgressing innate
laws but the positive life where man is first responsible for learning the law through the rule of right reason and then for obeying the law.
God uses not to capitvat under a perpetuall childhood of prescription, but trusts him [man] with the gift of reason to be his oim chooser; there were but little work left for preaching, if law and compulsion should grow so fast upon those things which hertofore were govern'd only by exhortation. (Areopagitica, C.E. IV,311)
It is for this reason that God the Father in Paradise Lost calls the conscience which he has given Adam, "My Umpire Conscience,” rather than
"My Dictator Conscience."
Under such circumstances reason and will are closely identified in Milton's ethical thought as they were with the Stoics because like the Stoics Milton presumes that right action is the result of right thought.69 Judgment not only precedes the action; judgment is also the cause of the action. "When God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing" (Areopagitica, C.E. IV.319).
69Ruth L. Bartholomew, "Some Sources of Milton's Doctrine of Free Will," Diss. Western Reserve 1945, notices that Milton has a tendency to identify reason and will in his ethics (p. 140). However, Ms. Bartholomew does not seem to be aware of any Stoic influence here. 47
Since "reason is but choosing," sin is the fault of the reason
rather than of the will. In this case one of the effects of sin is to
weaken the reason so that it cannot properly perform its functions.
Milton sees this result as the first effect of original sin. In Chris
tian Doctrine he refers to it as "spiritual death":
This death consists, first, in the loss or at least in the obscuration to a great extent of that right reason which enabled man to discern the chief good, and in which consisted as it were the life of the understanding.70 (C.E. XV.207. My italics)
The translation of Milton's original Latin term "percipiendum" by the
English word "discern" does not quite do the verb "percipio" justice.
The primary Ciceronian meaning of the word, is "to transfer from the
senses to the mind." Only in this sense does it mean "to discern" or
"to apprehend."71 It therefore becomes evident that Milton's regenerated
man, who has been freed from the bondage of original sin, has the power
to determine what is right and what is wrong by means of his reason
working on sense knowledge. Marjorie Nicholson explains the process in
her discussion of Milton's belief in the power of reason:
Milton shares the Stoic exaltation of Reason, in which he finds the chief gift of God to man; originally possessed by all men equally, the light of Reason becomes dim only when man allows his passions to usurp the authority of Reason. The vital animal life, good in itself, must be sub servient to the intellectual life;...Reason
7°"Posita est autem haec mors primum in privatione vel saltern magna obscuratione rectae rationis ad summum bonum percipiendum, quae vitae instar intellectui erat" (C.E. XV.206). 71D. P. Simpson, Cassell's New Latin Dictionary (New York: Funk and Wagnall's, 1959), p. 433. 48
governing the passions, sees through the apparent to the reality beneath,...The value which is inherent in the thing is known only to a calm dispassionate mind.72
The dispassionate judgment which is- the mark of a mature reason is,
as Nicholson implies, the result of rigorous self-discipline. Each
failure in regard to self-discipline weakens the reason's ability to
judge because it becomes susceptible to the passion which it ought to
govern. Thus Masson Tung points out that the major theme found in all
of Milton's prose is that of discipline.73 In The Reason of Church
Government, Milton tells us that "there is not that thing in the world of more grave and urgent importance through the whole life of man,.than is discipline" (C.E. III.184). Then he goes on to say
that the flourishing and decaying of all civill societies, all the moments and turnings of humane occasions are mov'd to and from as upon the axle of discipline.,.. Nor is there any sociable perfection in this life civill or sacred that can be above discipline, but she is that which with her musicall cords preserves and holds all the parts thereof together....The state also of the blessed in Paradise, though never so perfect, is not therefore left without discipline,....And certainly discipline is not only the removal of disorder, but if any visible shape can be given to divine things, the very visible shape and image of virtue, whereby she is not only seen in the regular gestures and motions of her heavenly paces as she walks, but also makes the harmony of her voice audible to mortal1 eares. (ibid. 185ff.)
It is inconceivable to Milton that self-discipline which had worked so
72”Miiton and Hobbes," SR, XXIII (Oct. 1926), 418-419. 73"The Search for Perfection in John Milton," Diss. Stanford 1962, p. 53. 49
well in his own life should not also be the guide of all mankind.74 It is
for this reason that he wrote Areopagitica and The Divorce Tracts. These
are not pleas for a romantic freedom which will allow man to live his own
life in any way he wishes, but pleas for every man to be allowed the
freedom to discipline himself so that his- reason can choose aright. To
Milton's way of thinking, freedom to live according to whim and fancy is
not freedom at all but license. Milton allies himself with Seneca in the
belief that the only life of any value is the life of moral struggle, and
this life cannot be lived without the freedom to choose and to prepare
oneself foi choosing:
He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister'd vertue, unexercis'd and unbreath'd, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortall garland is to be; run for, not without dust and heat. (Areopagitica, C.E. IV,311)
There is no standing still in the struggle to achieve moral perfection.
One either accepts the freedom to subdue the passions so that he can live his daily life according to reason and thereby progress in virtue, or one slowly falls prey to the passions until his reason loses the capability to make correct judgments, thereby falling into sin. This, as we shall see, is exactly what happens to Adam and Eve in Paradise
Lost, because Milton believes that when God made Adam and Eve perfect,
He gave them perfect freedom. This freedom was none other than the freedom which Milton was seeking for regenerated man in Areopagitica.
74Tung, p. 59. 50
and The Divorce Tracts--Che freedom to accept the challenge of moral discipline. Unfortunately, Adam and Eve, even with all their physical and mental gifts from God were unable to meet this challenge. II PRELAPSARIAN PERFECTION
Since any interpretation of the fall, of man must of necessity rest
on an interpretation of what Adam and Eve were like before they fell, it
is hardly surprising that Milton scholars have treated the subject of
prelapsarian perfection rather extensively. However, it does seem
surprising that so many critics are so willing to find fault with Milton's
presentation of Adam and Eve's innocence. Unfavorable criticism ranges
from C. S. Lewis's mild complaint that Eve seems too modest and naive with regard to sex while Adam is not modest enough1 to Basil Willey's assertion that in order to make the fall of Adam and Eve plausible Milton had "to attribute to them some of the frailties of fallen humanity."2
Basically the critical commentary on Milton's prelapsarian Adam and
Eve resolves itself into two categories. There are, first of all, those critics who believe like Willey that Milton's Adam and Eve are somehow already fallen before they actually sin because they exhibit signs of imperfection before they sin. A. J. Waldock pretty well sums up this critical position when he states that
"There was no way for Milton of making the transition from sinlessness to sin perfectly intelligible. It is obvious that Adam and Eve must already have contracted human weaknesses before they can start on the course of conduct that leads to the fall; to
1C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 124. 2Basil Willey, The Seventeenth Century Background (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), p. 255.
51 52
put it another way, they must already be fallen (technically) before they can begin to fall."3
Recently scholars have sought to answer this type of critical assertion
by demonstrating that the critics who hold it have failed to understand
the Christian Augustinian tradition which Milton was following in his
delineation of prelapsarian man.4 Within this tradition Adam and Eve's
perfection before the Fall was considered to be a relative perfection,
not an absolute perfection.5 Augustine clearly states that Adam and Eve
were predisposed to sin before they actually fell (City of God xiv. 13).
Thus those critics who hold that Milton's sinless couple are already
fallen before they eat the forbidden fruit are actually demonstrating
their own misunderstanding of the Augustinian concept of perfection as it
is related to Adam and Eve rather than making a valid criticism of Milton's rendering of that perfection.
Millicent Bell makes this error very obvious in her interpretation of the fall:
[TheJ transition between man and woman uncorrupt and mankind corrupted is simply to be accepted as having happened. Yet the mind cannot accept the fact that perfection was capable of corruption without denying the absoluteness of perfection.6
3A. J. Waldock, Paradise Lost and Its Critics (Cambridge; University Press, 1961), p. 61. 4See especially A. B. Chambers, "The Falls of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost,” New Essays on Paradise Lost, ed. Thomas Kranidas (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), p. 119; J. M. Evans, "Native Innocence,” Paradise Lost and the Genesis Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968); Peter Amadeus Fiore, "The Influence of Augustine on Milton's Work," Diss. London 1960, p. 74; C. A. Patrides, "The Fall of Angels and Men," Milton and the Christian Tradition. 5H. V. S. Ogden, "The Crisis of Paradise Lost Reconsidered," PQ, XXXVI (1957), 5, notes that "there is nothing in Paradise Lost or in Milton's other works to indicate that Adam was perfect in an absolute sense." 6"The Fallacy of the Fall in Paradise Lost," PMLA, LXVII (1953), 863. 53
The answer to Mrs. Bell's problem is of course that the Christian tradi
tion never held Adam and Eve's perfection to be absolute. However, she
prefers to believe that perfect means "absolutely perfect" and goes on
from there to prove erroneously that Milton's intention in the poem must
have been to display the effects of sin and not the causes.7
The second category of critical commentary on Milton's presentation
of prelapsarian innocence is made up of those critics who hold that since
Adam and Eve had reached a state of perfection there was nothing left
for them to do. Thus Tillyard laments the life of "utter stagnation"
which the completely sinless couple would have been forced to live and
points out that if Milton had been placed in the same position he "would
very soon have eaten the apple on his own responsibility and immediately
justified the act in a polemical pamphlet."8 A corollary to Tillyard's
position would turn the Fall inself into an utter moral necessity.9
Basil Willey, for example, gives the impression that Adam and Eve would
have been only half human had they not fallen, for they would have lacked
the knowledge necessary to live a real moral life instead of the rather
negative moral life which they were living in Paradise,10 This second
category and its corollary are once again illustrative of the absolutist
position. Adam and Eve would have to have been absolutely perfect in
7Bell, p. 864. aMilton (London: Chatto and Hindus, 1946), p. 282. 9This would not of course include the concept of the fortunate fall which Adam rejoices over in Bk. XII, lines 469-485. The Fall can be considered fortunate only because it gave God a chance to show forth his goodness in the redemptive act not because it gave Adam the opportunity to become, a moral being. For an historical sketch which makes this point extremely well see, Arthur 0. Lovejoy, "Milton and the Paradox of the Fortunate Fall," ELH, IV (1937), pp. 161-179. Seventeenth Century Background, pp. 254-255. 54
order to reach the state where no further perfection would have been
possible.
Even so, Tillyard's and Willey's objections to the apparent sterility x
of Adam and Eve's perfection are not as easily answered as the objections
of Mrs. Bell and Mr. Waldock. Since the Augustinian tradition deals
primarily with the sin of Adam and Eve and does not speculate on their
lives had they remained perfect, it does not answer the question con
cerning how Adam and Eve would have perfected themselves from the state
of relative perfection which they already held. It nowhere in fact
suggests that further perfection would have been possible or even desirable.
Milton, on the other hand, sees further perfection for his sinless pair
as a distinct possibility. Raphael tells Adam, for example, that he may
very well achieve a further degree of perfection on the hierarchical
scale of being:
Time may come when men With Angels may participate, and find No inconvenient Diet, nor too light Fare: And from these corporal nutriments perhaps Your bodies may at last turn all to Spirit, Improv'd by tract of.time, and wing'd ascend Ethereal, as wee, or may at choice Here or in Heav'nly Paradises dwell; If ye be found obedient. (V. 493-501)
Besides this overt mentioning of the fact that further perfection is
possible, there is evidence within the poem itself that Adam and Eve are
in fact perfecting themselves while living in Paradise. The Eve who waits
on Adam and Raphael at table, for example, is certainly more aware of herself and her place than the Eve who does not even recognize her own reflection in the pool moments after her creation. By means of his 55
discussion with Raphael, Adam gains knowledge about himself and his
place in the world. Thus, he too is perfecting himself. C. S. Lewis
tells us that at first he misunderstood Milton's intention in Paradise
Lost because he associated "innocence with childishness" in Adam and Eve.
"The beauty I expected in Adam and Eve was that of the primitive, the
unsophisticated, the Perhaps Lewis was not so far wrong as he
later came to believe, for there does seem to be a certain naivete at
least on the part of Eve as she is first introduced to us. The fact that
this naiveness vanishes so suddenly from her personality could certainly
be taken- as an indication of her intellectual growth.
It is my contention that an analysis of Milton's presentation of
prelapsarian perfection will show that Milton does hold out the possibil
ity for intellectual and at the. same time moral growth for Adam and Eve.
Furthermore, such an interpretation of prelapsarian perfection does not
originate in the Augustinian tradition because neither Augustine nor the
fideists who followed him concern themselves with the subject of Adam and
Eve's possible growth. Moreover, this is not the only area in which there
are discrepancies between Milton's conception of prelapsarian innocence
and that of Augustine. For example, Milton obviously agrees with
Augustine that Adam and Eve had "integrity of mind" before they fell, but
he just as obviously does not agree as to the nature of that integrity.
Again, Milton follows Augustine in demonstrating Adam and Eve's predis
position to sin, but his interpretation of that predisposition differs markedly from Augustine's. In yet another instance, Milton definitely
agrees with Augustine that Adam and Eve fell as a result of being tempted
iiPre/aee to Paradise Lost, p. 116. 56
by Satan. However, be does not agree with Augustine on how Adam and Eve
were affected by that temptation.
If these points of difference between Milton and Augustine were
merely on superficial matters, one might be tempted to overlook them,
but they are hardly superficial. Rather they point to a fundamental
difference between Milton and Augustine on the very nature of prelapsarian
man. Where Augustine sees Adam as a man primarily guided by his will,
Milton sees him primarily guided by reason. Thus Milton is not following
Augustine in his interpretation of prelapsarian man. Rather, he is using
Augustine as a doctrinal base for his own interpretation. The ethics
which underlie that interpretation are not Augustinian but generally
classical and more particularly Stoic. For this reason Milton's presen
tation of prelapsarian perfection is a unique entity because it combines
two totally foreign traditions into a whole. The -magnitude of such an
accomplishment can only be appreciated in a minute analysis.
Patrides mentions Walter Ralegh's observation concerning prelapsarian perfection that "there is much dispute among the Fathers, Schoole-men and
late Writers," and calls it understatement rather than fact.12 There was of course more area for disagreement among Renaissance writers over the nature of prelapsarian perfection than there was for agreement, but even . so, certain general principles were agreed upon by everyone. Thus as far back as the days of the ante-Nicean fathers it was already traditional
Church belief that Adam and Eve in the state of innocence had been given the supernatural gift of grace and the preternatural gifts of immortality of the body and freedom from pain. All three of these gifts were some-
¿Milton and the Christian Tradition, n. 48, p. .49. 57
thing above and beyond man's ordinary human nature. Augustine goes
farther than the traditional view, however, when he contends that even
without these gifts Adam and Eve's human nature was different before the
fall than after. Augustine bases his observation on the only statement
In Genesis which makes any reference to Adam and Eve's perfect human
nature.
And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.13
This of course contrasts with the Biblical statement concerning their
condition following the Fall:
And the eyes of them both were opened and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made them-- selves aprons. (Genesis 3.7)
Augustine concludes from these contrasting descriptions that Adam in the
state of innocence possessed integrity. This means that Adam's will and
his reason were in perfect harmony with each other. Thus Adam by nature
could not will that which was contrary to his reason:
[Adam'sJ body was perfectly healthy and his soul completely at peace. And as in Eden there was never a day too hot or too cold, so in Adam who lived there, no fear or desire was ever so passionate as to worry his will. (City of God XIV.26)
Adam's life of "unshaken comfort" and "complete tranquility" here
described by Augustine is the result of his "integrity of mind"; that is,
the whole of Adam's sensitive life was completely controlled by his
reason, for his will desired nothing which was unreasonable.
i'irhe King James Version of the Bible, ed. Ernest Sutherland Bates (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936), "Genesis," 2.25. Any further references to the Bible will be from this edition and will be identified in the text. 58
This state of integrity is best understood when seen in contrast
with the state of Adam and Eve after the Fall. Augustine maintains that
immediately after the Fall,
a strange and irrepressible commotion sprang up in their bodies that made nakedness indecent. They realized the rebellion and it made them ashamed. (City of God XIV.17)
[They] covered themselves with fig leaves.... The parts covered remained unchanged except that previously, they occasioned no shame. (City of God XIII.13)
The reason for this sudden shame which caused Adam and Eve to realize they were naked and to cover themselves was that their wills were no longer working with their reasons but with their passions. They were no longer in control of their desires:
There is nothing else that now makes a man more miserable than his own disobedience to himself. Because he would not do what he could, he can no longer do what he would. . . (City of God XIV.IS)
Before the Fall, all bodily pleasure was the result of a reasonable decision on the part of Adam. However, in the world of fallen man,
"bodily pleasure...is preceded by a kind of appetite, a sensation in the flesh corresponding to desire in the soul" (loo. cit.). Augustine calls this oftentimes overpowering appetite "lust":
Lust is a word applicable to any kind of appetite, as in the classical definition of anger as a lust for revenge....As lust for revenge is called anger, so lust for money is avarice, lust to win at any price is obstinacy, lust for bragging is vanity. And there are still many other kinds of lust, some with names and some without. (loo. cit.). 59
In the postlapsarian world, man is oftentimes moved to sin by lust. In
other words, his passions overcome his reason, so that he wills to commit
acts which his reason tells him he should not commit. In the state of
innocence, when man had integrity of mind, lust did not exist because the
will and the reason always worked together.
Milton is in complete agreement with Augustine concerning the point
of Adam's original integrity in the prelapsarian state and the resultant
loss of that integrity for both Adam and his posterity because of original
sin. Milton explains in Christian Doctrine that before the Fall it was not necessary for Adam to "be bound by the obligation of a covenant" to perform good acts because he was by nature "inclined" to the performance of such acts, in that he naturally followed right reason, choosing that which "is intrinsically good" (C.E. XV.115-117). Elsewhere in Christian
Doctrine, Milton says that one of the results of original sin is that it led to concupiscence or the "desire of sinning" (C.E. XIV.193).
In Paradise Lost Milton also follows the Augustinian doctrine of integrity in his presentation of Adam and Eve before the Fall. However,
Milton's Stoic attitude toward the virtuous life will not permit him to see that integrity a# a life of "complete tranquility," for such a life is, as Seneca says, nothing more than "a Dead Sea." Thus Milton interprets the doctrine of integrity in a much broader way than Augustine. For
Milton "integrity of mind" does not mean that Adam and Eve had no passions to worry their wills, but that they were not afflicted by the
"high" passions, such as lust, anger, hate and jealousy. There were certain kinds of legitimate passions which Adam and Eve had to possess in order for them to be human. For example, Adam had a healthy appetite for 60
food just as he also had a strong appetite for knowledge. Moreover,
Adam had a natural desire to love his wife and procreate the race. These
passions, so long as they are controlled by the reason, are quite normal
and in no way lessen prelapsarian integrity. The distinction between
Augustine's and Milton's interpretation of prelapsarian integrity can be
best illustrated by discussing in detail Augustine's and Milton's
attitudes toward unfallen sexuality.
Augustine is willing to admit that, sexual union was possible for
Adam and Eve in the state of innocence, but the act would have taken
place only at the instigation of the reason and only for the purpose of
procreation. For these reasons, Augustine clinically defines the act-as
"passionless procreation":
Surely, every member of the body was equally submissive to the mind and, surely, a man and his wife could play their active and passive roles in the drama of conception without the lecherous promptings of lust,...The seminal flow could have reached the womb with as little rupture of the hymen and by the same vaginal ducts as is at' present the case, in reverse, with the menstrual flux. And just as the maturity of the fetus could have brought the child to birth without the meanings of the mother in pain, so could connection and conception have occurred by a mutually deliberate union unhurried by the hunger of lust. (City of God XIV.26)
Augustine's description of the sexual union before the Fall not only removes from it every vestige of rebellious lust, but also makes of it an act completely without pleasure or even love. The act was simply a duty which Adam and Eve would have had to perform in order to procreate children. About the only comfort and satisfaction they could have possibly derived from such an act was that it did not hurt. Augustine's 61
prelapsarian sexual union would have been as inviting as washing one's
hands before supper.14
Milton’s presentation of unfallen sexuality, while it does not
actually violate Augustine's concept of integrity, certainly is not
within the Augustinian spirit. In describing the act of love between
Adam and Eve, Milton says that it was "not obvious, not obtrusive, but
retir'd" (P.L. VIII.504). Certainly so described, it is an act both
reasonable and moderate. However, Milton sees the act as more than a
necessary obligation for the procreation of children. It is an act of
love and as such it is stimulated not by the promptings of reason but by
the promptings of love and "conjugal attraction unreprov'd":
14Thomas Aquinas disagrees with Augustine's interpretation of prelapsarian sexuality. He states his own view in answering Augustine's objection that man while engaging in sexual relations is no better than a beast: , Beasts are without reason. In this way man becomes, as it were, like them in coition, because he cannot moderate concupiscence. In the state of innocence nothing of this kind would have happened ‘ that was not regulated by reason, not because delight of sense was less as some say (rather indeed would sensible delight have been the greater in proportion to the greater purity of nature and the greater sensibility of the body), but because the force of concupiscence would not have so inordinately thrown itself into such pleasure, being curbed by reason, whose place it is not to lessen sensual pleasure, but to prevent the force of concupiscence from cleaving to it immoderately. By immoderately I mean going beyond the bounds of reason, as a sober person does not take less pleasure in food taken in moderation than the glutton, but his concupiscence lingers less in such pleasures. (Summa Theologica, I.Q., 98, A.2) Aquinas's view seems much more reasonable than Augustine's, but it is interesting to note that he too makes the prelapsarian sex act an act of reason rather than an act of love. 62
[Therefore) Eve half Embracing leand On our first Father, half her swelling Breast Naked met his under the flowing Gold Of her loose tresses hid: he in delight Both of her Beauty and submissive Charms Smil'd with superior Love. (IV.494-499)
This kind of activity would not have been sinful in Augustine's garden,
but it surely would have been out of place, just as it would also have
been out of place for Adam and Eve to wander "hand in hand" (IV.689) in
"youthful dalliance" (IV.336) or for Eve to deck her nuptial bed with
flowers (IV.710). It is obvious, therefore, that Milton's Adam and Eve
have a strong emotional attachment to each other, and it is this emotional
attachment which leads to sexual activity rather than their reasonable
desire to procreate children as Augustine believed would have been the
case. The emotion involved here is most certainly a legitimate passion .
However, Milton's Adam and Eve do not become angry or lustful or
suspicious of each other until after they fall:
They sate them down to weep, nor onely Teares Raind at thir Eyes, but high Winds worse within Began to rise, high Passions, Anger, Hate, Mistrust, Suspicion, Discord, and shook sore Thir inward State of Mind, calm Region once And full of Peace, now tost and turbulent: For Understanding rul'd not, and the Will Heard not her lore, both in subjection now To sensual Appetite, who from beneathe Usurping over sovran Reason claimd Superior sway. (IX.1121-1131. My italics) .
Milton's rather broad interpretation of Augustinian integrity in no way stems from the Stoic ethic, but it does allow him to present a very classical Stoic interpretation of what leads Adam and Eve to commit "the mortal Sin Original," which a strict interpretation of Augustinian 63
integrity would not have allowed him. With this in mind, we shall
discuss Augustine's and Milton's Interpretation of Adam and Eve's
predisposition to sin.
Augustine lists the sources of temptation for fallen man as two:
one, "from the propensity to evil inherent in man as a result of original
sin and two, from the devil."15 Since there are only two ways that post
lapsarian man can be tempted and since one of those ways centers on man's
concupiscence resulting from the Fall, the only way Adam and Eve could
have been tempted was through Satan. This was by the time of Augustine
already a traditional belief of the church resting on the account in
Genesis which says Adam and Eve were tempted by a serpent. However,
Augustine goes further than Genesis in pointing out that Adam and Eve
because of pride had already predisposed their wills to temptation before
they were tempted by Satan:
■ Moreover, our first parents only fell openly into the sin of disobedience because, secretly, they had begun to be guilty. Actually their bad deed could not have been done had not bad will preceded it; What is more, the root of their bad will was nothing else than pride. For, 'pride is the beginning of all sin' (Eccli., 10.15). And what is pride but an appetite for inordinate exaltation?...Our first parents, then, must already have fallen before they could commit the sin of eating the forbidden fruit. (City of God XIV.13)
.Augustine's quotation from Ecclesiastes that "pride is the beginning of
all sin" inexorably links the sin of Adam and Eve to the sin of Satan which Augustine had anlyzed in Book XII of The City of God. Satan fell through pride and then was able to tempt Adam and Eve to the same sin
l5Sermon, 344", quoted by Fiore, p. 104. 64
of pride because their wills were so disposed:
The conclusion, then is that the Devil would not have begun by an open and obvious sin to • tempt man into doing something which God had forbidden, had not man already begun to seek satisfaction in himself and, consequently to take pleasure in the words: 'You shall be as Gods.' ' (XIV.13)
In another work Augustine defines all sin, whether it be Satan's, Adam's
or fallen man's, as a "will to power": "The soul loving its own power,
relapses from a desire for a common and universal good to one which is
individual and private."16 Augustine says nothing concerning the exact
moment on the continuum of time leading to the actual act of sin by Adam
and Eve that their "will to power" began to manifest itself. However, he
states clearly and often that pride lay at the root of the first sin, and
that a bad will was the cause of pride.
Milton follows the traditional interpretation of scripture which
holds that Adam and Eve fell as a result of being tempted by the devil in
the guise of a serpent. God the Father speaks very explicitly on this
point in Paradise Lost:
The first sort [Satan and his company] by thir own suggestion fell, Self-tempted, self-deprav'd: Man falls deceiv'd By the other first: Man therefore shall find grace, The other none. (III.129-132)
It should be noted, however, that at the very same time Milton's God verifies a traditional commonplace, he also breaks from the Augustinian tradition by making a distinction between the sin of Satan and the sin of
Adam and Eve. It will be remembered that for Augustine there was no
Trinitatae, XIT.ix.14, quoted by Cochrane, p. 448. 65
distinction. Pride springing from an evil will was the root of all sin
whether that sin be committed by angel or man.
The description Milton's God gives of Satan's sin very strongly
indicates that Milton, like Augustine, saw that sin as one of pride, for
Satan falls "self-tempted" and "self-depraved." Moreover)- Milton's
presentation of the war in heaven makes it clear that Satan falls through
pride. Abdiel describes Satan's defiant speech as an "argument
blasphemous, false and proud" (V.811) while Milton authorially character
izes "th apostate" angel as "haughty" (V.852), and Satan himself claims
to be "self-begot, self-rais'd" (V.860) rather than a creature of God.
Thus Milton's presentation of Satan's sin seems to be a perfect dramatic
rendering of Augustine's analysis of the sinful will as one which takes
"perverse delight in its own liberty" and one which is "inordinately
pleased with itself" (City of God XIV.13).
In regard to Adam and Eve, Milton seems on the one hand to be
following Augustinian precedent and on the other to be rejecting it. He
follows Augustine by contriving a series of incidents which show us an
Adam and Eve who are gradually becoming predisposed to accept the temptation offered by Satan. Milton refers to this predisposition to sin
in Christian Doctrine, calling it "the liability to fall with which man was created" (C.E. XV.181). The incidents by which Milton chooses to illustrate this liability have been mentioned by critics numerous times
(often to prove that Adam and Eve were not really perfect in the prelap sarian state) and include Eve's admiration of herself in the pool, Adam's admission to Raphael that his passion for Eve seems superior to any experience he knows, Eve's bad dream, and Eve's going off to work alone. 66
However, neither these incidents themselves nor the way Milton
elaborates them give any indication that Milton believes Adam and Eve's
predisposition to sin consisted of pride.
The first scene which clearly illustrates that Adam and Eve, though
perfect, are still liable to fall depicts Eve's admiration of her own
reflection in the pond. Some critics find this scene illustrative of
Eve's womanly vanity.17 If this interpretation is correct then Milton must be following Augustine in his depiction of Eve's predisposition to
sin, for vanity is pride. Yet there is a problem with this interpretation.
In order for a person to be vain, he must have some awareness of what he
is vain about. Thus Eve might legitimately be accused of vanity if she knew that she were looking at and admiring her own reflection. However, it seems to me that the key to this particular scene lies in the fact that Eve does not even realize that she is looking at herself. Unlike
Satan, who because of pride does not know himself, since he has a false image of what he himself is, Eve has no image at all of "selfness." She has so little self-awareness that even after being told "What there thou seest fair Creature is thy self" (IV.468), she still contrasts Adam's appearance to "that smooth watry image" (IV.480) not to her own appearance.
Under such circumstances Eve can hardly be said to be proud, or even vain.18
17Jon S. Lawry, The Shadow of Heaven (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968), p. 175. 18I do not rule out Don Cameron Allen's position that the pool scene demonstrates an element of narcissism in Eve's character, "Milton's Eve and the Evening Angels," MLN, LXXV (1960). However, 1 do believe that this narcissism is latent in her character and is not as important as the fact that she fails to make a correct judgment when presented with the image in the pool. 67
Neither can it be said that Adam is inordinately pleased with
himself when he tells Raphael that his passion for Eve seems superior to
any experience he knows. Had he been so pleased, his response to Raphael’s
correction would have resembled the response Satan makes to Abdiel's
correction, but Adam answers "half abash't" and tries to -correct his error
while Satan under similar admonishment gives an haughty answer and persists
in his error.
Perhaps Eve takes perverse delight in her own liberty when she frees
herself from Adam to go work alone. If she does, Milton does not
demonstrate such a response. Instead he intrudes authorially to echo his
own God with the statement that Eve is "much deceav'd" (IX.404).
It seems fair then to assume that Milton is deviating from the
Augustinian position that Adam and Eve’s predisposition to sin consisted
of pride. Perhaps the key to exactly how Milton swerves froin the
Augustinian belief can be seen in God the Father's statement that "Man
falls deceiv'd" (III.130). When a person is deceived he gives intellectual
assent to something which is false. This is an act of the reason not of the will. In fact Adam warns Eve of this very point just before she
leaves him to go off and work alone:
Firm we subsist, yet possible to swerve, Since Reason not impossibly may meet Some specious object by the Foe subornd, And fall into deception unaware, Not keeping strictest watch, as she was warnd. (IX.359-363)
Milton's continual emphasis on Adam and Eve's having been deceived is a strong indication that he conceives of their sin as somehow being the result of a faulty reason rather than a faulty will. In fact, the 68
incidents which Milton has chosen to illustrate Adam and Eve's predispo
sition to sin bear this out because as we shall see, each incident is an
example of Adam and Eve's making a faulty judgment rather than reacting
in a prideful manner.
The conception of man's predisposition to sin being’a failure on the
part of the reason to make correct judgments is treated by none of the
classical moralists except the Stoics, but they treat the subject exten
sively. Seneca points out, for example, that sin does not happen all at
once. Instead, man's mind becomes "effeminate by degrees" (Ep. lxxxii.2).
He uses the term effeminate because he conceives of the mind as gradually
losing power over the will as a result of its making bad judgments. In
another place, Seneca calls sin "a disease of the mind" and compares it
with physical disease. "Just as in the body symptoms of latent ill health
precede the disease...so the feeble mind is shaken by its ills a long
time before it is overcome by them" (Ep. lxxiv.33). In the next epistle
Seneca goes on to explain what he means by shaken. He says that diseases
of the mind are brought about by "a persistent failure in judgment, so that things which are mildly desirable are judged to be highly desirable"
(Ep. lxv.ll).19
Seneca's description of sin as a growing disease of the mind because of its failure to make correct judgments is dramatically presented by
Milton in his depiction of Adam and Eve's predisposition to sin. Eve tells us that immediately after her creation she heard the murmuring sound of water emptying into a "liquid Plain":
l3See also Ep. lvi.13.. 69
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. 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 pleas'd I soon returnd, Pleas'd 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. (IV.456-469)
That Eve is here making a faulty judgment is certainly obvious to the
divine voice which seeks to correct her judgment rather than admonish her pride. Clearly, Eve has been deceived by her senses into believing that the image in the pool is somehow real and worth her sympathy and love.
Eve is in fact so taken by this deception that she would have been quite willing to spend the rest of her days pining "with vain desire" over a creature which does not even exist. To paraphrase Seneca, Eve judges something as "highly desirable" which is not in the least desirable.
Eve's inability to make correct judgments is stressed even further by Milton when he shows her persisting in the belief that the image in the pond is real and more desirable than her husband even after she has been told by the voice that what she was looking at was her own reflection.
Lee A. Jacobs analyzes this scene perfectly when he says, "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."20
20"Self-Knowledge in Paradise Lost: Conscience and Contemplation," Milton Studies, III (1971), 108. 70
It is this kind of sense deception which leads to the mistakes in judgment
that Seneca sees as man's predisposition to sin. Moreover, what should
perhaps be added to Jacob's analysis is that the great trust Eve puts in
"outsides" is natural to her. As we shall see, nowhere in Paradise Lost
does Eve demonstrate that she possesses any intuitive reasoning ability.
All of her knowledge comes to her through the senses. She is capable of
reasoning, of course, but she can reason about only what her senses have
presented to her mind. This is not a fault' in Eve's character but a
fact of her existence. As Charles Coffin notes in contrasting Adam and
Eve’s behavior after their creation, "Adam...experienced what is external,
as the prior phase of the apprehension of self-existence; but Eve presumably would not have reached this state."21 In other words, Adam is able to use sense knowledge to gain knowledge of the reality beyond the senses. Eve cannot. For this reason, says Coffin, God does not appear to Adam until he has given Adam a chance to discover himself and his relationship to God through his own reason.22 With Eve, however, God appears immediately, for the only way to reach Eve is through direct invitation.23 It is for this reason that she should be subject to Adam, who speaks to her directly, rather than to God, who oftentimes speaks indirectly through his natural law operative in the universe.
Adam's intellect differs from Eve's only in degree not in kind.
Thus he too is prone to make faulty judgments based on sense perception.
However, because he does possess a mind which is capable of seeing beyond
21"Creation and the Self in Paradise Lost," ELH, XXIX (March, 1962), IS. 22Coffin, p. 9. 23Coffin, p. 15. 71
sense knowledge, he is far more culpable for these bad judgments than is
Eve.
The foremost example of Adam's fault in this regard occurs when he
tells Raphael that even though he understands Eve's place'in the divine
scheme and what his relationship to her should be:
Yet when I approach Her loveliness, so absolute she seems And in her self compleat, so well to know Her own, that what she wills to do or say, Seems wisest, vertuousest, discreetest, best; All higher knowledge in her presence falls Degraded, Wisdom in discourse with her Looses discount'nanc't, and like folly shewes; Authority and Reason on her waite, As one intended first, not after made Occasionally. (VIII.546-556)
It is to this statement that Raphael answers with "contracted brow," and
well he should, for Adam is not only making an error in judgment but he
is also making it with full knowledge that he is in error. What is perhaps even worse is that Adam's admission of this false judgment to the
angel proves that he does not understand the magnitude of such an error.
As Seneca notes, the difference between bodily sickness and sickness of the mind is that when one begins to get physically sick he is immediately aware of illness. However, with diseases of the mind one is usually unaware of illness until it becomes too late to seek the cure (Ep. liii.6§7). Since preventive medicine is, after all, the whole purpose of Raphael's visit, he immediately warns Adam of his mistaken judgment.
Adam, he says, has deserted wisdom:
By attributing overmuch to things Less excellent, as thou thy self perceav'st For what admir'st thou, what transports thee so, An outside? fair no doubt, and worthy well 72
Thy cherishing, thy honouring, and thy love, Not thy subjection: weigh with her thy self; Then value. (VIII.565-571)
In essence Raphael is telling Adam that he must make judgments in regard
to Eve which are based on his reasonable insight, not on his senses. Then
Raphael goes on to be much more specific:
But 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; which would not be To them made common and divulg'd, if aught Therein enjoy’d were worthy to subdue The Soule of Man, or passion in him move. (VIII.579-585)
Raphael is telling Adam that it is specifically his passionate experiences » with Eve which are clouding his judgment in regard to her. To those of us who have been nurtured in the Augustinian tradition, this seems like a rather strange admonition because Augustine's Adam would never have needed such an admonishing. The reason for this of course is Augustine’s belief that Adam's integrity of mind prevented passion from ever "worrying his will." Because Milton interprets integrity to mean only that Adam could not be overcome by "high passion," a passion such as undisciplined human love could lead Adam to judge incorrectly which it does in this instance.
More specifically, Adam is not lustful in his attitude, just mistaken.
It should be noted in this connection that Augustine mentions the
"strange and irrepressible commotion [which] sprang.up in" Adam and Eve after they committed the first sin (City of God XIX.17). Milton, on the other hand, has Adam admit to feeling "Commotion strange, in all enjoyments else/Superiour and unmov'd" (VIII.531-532) while he is still in the state of prelapsarian perfection. In fact it is this very commotion which 73
causes Adam to judge poorly. Significantly, Seneca lists "commotion of
the soul" as the second of the. three stages which make up sin, When the
soul feels commotion, it has not yet sinned, but it "begins as it were to
toss on the sea of affection; it has ceased to be an orderly whole and is
about to fall into confusion."24 Adam on this occasion has not yet committed
sin, but he is in the stage immediately preceding it, because he has let
his passionate experiences with Eve affect his power to judge correctly
what their proper relationship to each other should be--.a misjudgment
which as we have seen can be as fatal to her as it is to himself. It is
for this reason that Raphael reminds Adam that real love "hath his seat/
In Reason, and is judicious" (VIII.590-591).
Adam, of course, recognizes that he has made an error in judgment
and without making excuses for himself, "half abash't" tries to correct
it. However, Raphael still finds it necessary to warn Adam once more
before he leaves:
take heed least Passion sway Thy Judgement to do aught, which else free Will Would not admit. (VIII.635-638)
One might wonder why, if Adam has corrected himself, Raphael finds it
necessary to admonish him again. In terms of the Stoic ethic this further warning makes a great deal of sense. First of all, if sin is the result of mistaken judgment rather than malicious will, then theoretically a man who is told that he is in error will correct himself. So it is with Adam.
The whole purpose of Raphael's visit has been to warn Adam of the errors . to which he is prone and ’which he himself cannot see. In that spirit a second warning is not out of place. Secondly, as Seneca notes, each
24Seneca, Dialogues, III.viii.2. Quoted by Arnold, p. 353. 74
defection from reason weakens the reason so that the man who is unable to
make reasonable judgments in small matters will also fail to make them in
great matters (Ep. lxxxv.ll). Since Raphael must surely recognize the
weakened state into which Adam has fallen, he naturally feels uneasy
enough about Adam's state of mind to warn him again,
It should of course be recognized that there is a degree of difference between the error which Eve makes at the pool and the error which Adam makes. Both errors are mistakes in judgment resulting from too much dependence on sense knowledge. However, while this kind of mistake is natural to Eve, who by nature bases all her judgments on sense perception alone, it is not natural to Adam who has been given an intellect which is a little bit higher on the scale of being than Eve's. Adam’s reasoning like Eve's depends on sense knowledge, but he also has the capability of seeing beyond sense knowledge to God's natural law. Thus, before Adam tells Raphael of the power his passion for Eve has over him, he says:
For well I understand in the prime end Of Nature her th’inferiour, in the mind And inward Faculties, which most excell, In outward also her resembling less His Image who made both, and less expressing The character of that Dominion giv'n O're other Creatures; yet when I approach Her loveliness, so absolute she seems... (VIII.540-547. My italics)
One can hardly fail to notice Adam's recognition that his intellect is superior to Eve's, and that he really does understand that she only seems absolute. Indeed, Raphael recognizes this too, for he begins his admonition of Adam with the words, "as thou thy self perceav'st" (VIII.566).
Adam is therefore more responsible for his bad judgment than is Eve because he knows naturally that he ought not to be judging only on his 75
senses but on God's natural law, which he sees operative behind the mere
appearance of things. In this instance then, Milton has truly depicted
Adam in a state of "effeminacy of mind," for Adam is making judgments the
way a woman does. This in miniature is the same kind of error that Adam
will make later when he sends Eve into the garden to work-alone and still
later when he takes the apple from the hand of Eve.
Even though Adam is more responsible for his bad judgments than is
Eve, it should not be assumed that there is between them a tremendous
intellectual gulf. The only real difference between their intellects is that God has given Adam a reason which is instinctively drawn to see beyond sense knowledge to the laws whereby God governs all his creatures.
Eve has neither this instinct nor the power that goes with it. Milton's belief in what might be called man's "mental illumination" links him to
Cicero, who modified the early Stoic belief that man possessed no innate knowledge with the position that, although the deity did not give man ethical truths, he gave him a reason which would by nature discover those truths.25 As Cochrane points out, there was for Cicero nothing superior to reason, for "it constituted the link between man and man, and between man and God."25
25For further explanation of this principle see Jacques Maritain, Moral Philosophy (New York: Scribners, 1964), p. 60. He quotes Cicero from The Laws: Out of all the material of the philosphers' discussions, surely there comes nothing more valuable than the full realization that we are born for Justice, and that right is based, not upon man's opinions but upon Nature [i.e. natural law deduced by reasonj... in fact we can perceive the difference between good laws and bad by referring them to no other standard than Nature (p. 61), Paul Gibbs points out Milton's belief that man had the power to discover God's natural lav/ by means of that "mental illumination bestowed by the creator on all mankind,” (p. 72). Gibbs credits this same doctrine to Richard Hooker from whom Milton may have derived it. 25Cochrane, p. 42. 76
The power of Adam’s natural reason to discover God and His- law can
best be investigated by contrasting the activities of Adam'on first
awakening from the sleep of nonexistence to the same activities of Eve.
As soon as Adam awakens, he instinctively turns his eyes to heaven
(VIII.257) and begins the task of trying to determine who he is.
My self I then perus'd, and Limb by Limb' Survey'd, and sometimes went, and sometimes ran With supple joints, and lively vigour led: But who I was, or where, or from what cause, Knew not. (VIII.267-271)
Unlike Eve, who also wonders who she is (IV.452), but who makes no effort to find out about herself, Adam is drawn to seek out his nature, Thus he marvels over the fact that he can talk and knows the names of everything he encounters (VIII.271-272), Eve too knows the names of all she sees
(IV.453-455), but the fact of this knowledge makes no impression on her.
Contemplating the beauty of creation naturally leads Adam to the belief that he is a creature of God and must worship Him:
Ye Hills and Dales, ye Rivers, Woods, and Plaines, And ye that live and move, fair Creatures, tell. Tell, if ye saw, how came I thus, how here? Not of my self; by some great Maker then, In goodness and in power praeminent; 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.275-282)
The process which Adam is here going through is referred to by Seneca when he points out that the mind is often overcome by the presence of God in a beautiful and natural setting. In such a location, he says, "your soul will be deeply moved by a certain intimation of the existence of God"
(Ep. xli.3). However, there is more than just "intimation" involved here. 77
J. M. Evans, for example, contrasts this scene with a similar one in
Dracontius's Carmen de Deo in order to demonstrate that the very scene
which Dracontius uses to illustrate Adam's "child like innocence,"
Milton uses to exhibit "Adam's- intelligence." For Adam in this scene is
naturally "able to argue from his own existence to the existence of a
Creator."27 To put Evans' argument in other terms, it is Adam's reason
working on sense data which brings him to the knowledge of God's existence.
Moreover, Adam's reason takes him beyond the mere fact of God's existence
to a discovery of the proper relationship which should exist between the
creature and the Creator--"how may I know him, how adore."
Unlike Adam, Eve does not look up to heaven when she awakens but
down into the pool where she finds not true knowledge of herself but only
an image of herself.28 Eve does not have the "mental illumination" to
look beyond the beauty of the image in the pool to the creator of that beauty, but instead finds herself won over by the beauty of the object
itself. The fact that the object is only a reflection of beauty does not make any difference to a mind which cannot see beyond the mere appearance of things.
Milton points out this important difference between Adam and Eve in his first description of them:
Though both Not equal, as thir sex not equal seemd; For contemplation hee and valour formd, For softness shee and sweet attractive Grace, Hee for God only, shee for God in him. (IV.295-298)
27Paradise Lost and the Genesis Tradition, p. 258. 28Jacobs, p. 108. 78
It is the difference in intellect between Adam and Eve which leads Raleigh
to comment that Milton's Adam sounds a bit sententious in his conversation with Eve.29 However, it is sententiousness which Eve's intellect thrives on, particularly if that sententiousness is intermixed with "grateful digressions" and ’’conjugal Caresses." The point is, as Milton plainly tells us, that Eve was created to seek God through her husband and not through her own intellect. It does not take Eve long before she comes to understand the importance of this natural law. In fact, very soon after her first encounter with Adam, when she is willing to trade him in for a pretty reflection, we find her saying,
My Author and Disposer, what thou bidst Unargu'd I obey; so God ordains, God is thy Law, thou mine: to know no more Is womans happiest knowledge and her praise. (IV.635-638)
It is woman's "happiest knowledge" to obey her husband because if she does not she literally loses God, not only because she is thereby disobe dient to God's law but also because she does.not have the intellectual capability to find God by herself. Moreover, as Eve demonstrates by her next statement, God in His providence has so designed woman that obedience to her husband is not a chore but a pleasure:
With thee conversing I forget all time, All seasons and thir change, all please alike *********************** But neither breath of Morn vhen she ascends With charm of earliest Birds, nor rising Sun On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, floure, Glistring with dew, nor gragrance after showers, Nor grateful Eevning mild, nor silent Night With this her solemn Bird, nor walk by Moon, Or glittering Starr-light without thee is sweet. (IV.639-640; 650-656)
¿¿Milton (New York: Putnam § Sons, 1900), p. 250. 79
Eve's catalogue of sensual objects is as important here as it is
beautiful, for as usual Eve sees the beauty of natural objects without.
intellectually seeing the Creator behind these objects. For this knowledge
she must go to her husband:
But wherfore all night long shine these, for whom This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all' eyes? (IV.657-6SS)
Adam's answer, more catechetical perhaps than sententious, leads Eve past
the mere appearance of the stars to the God who made them and all the
spiritual creatures who adore Him:
These then, though unbeheld in deep of night, Shine not in vain, nor think, though men were none, That heav'n would want spectators, God want praise; Millions of spiritual Creatures walk the Earth Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep: All these with ceasless praise his works behold Both day and night. (IV.674-680)
In this short scene then, Milton is able not only to tell us that Eve's obedience to her husband is important but also to show us dramatically why it is important. If Eve is to know and serve God, she must be guided by her husband. At the same time, Adam too must never abdicate his position as Eve's lord and guide because if he does she will falter.
The ostensible weakness of Adam and Eve's reasons in making incorrect judgments because of their reliance on sense knowledge raises an important question concerning Milton's presentation of them. How is it possible for Milton to depict Adam and Eve, who were in the Christian tradition supposedly perfect, with imperfect intelligences? Augustine in his
Interpretation of the Fall analyzes the causes and effects of original sin exclusively in terms of the will. He treats the reason extensively only in regard to its weakened condition after the Fall. 'Concerning the 80
state of man's reason before the fall, Augustine says- only that the will
and the reason worked harmoniously together. John Calvin's attitude that
reason certainly must have been impaired because of original sin is a
typical response in the Augustine tradition. However, the nature of reason
before it became impaired was only vaguely hinted at when treated at all
in this tradition. This leaves Milton rather free in regard to his inter pretation of prelapsarian reason.
Milton's freedom in this regard does not of course extend to giving prelapsarian perfect human beings imperfect intellects, On the contrary,
Milton's treatment of the prelapsarian intellect indicates his belief that
God gave Adam and Eve intellects which were perfect for tile kind of being man is on the hierarchical scale of being. Man, prelapsarian man included, possesses the intellect of a being who in Raphael's terms is "in part spiritual"■(V.405). Thus Adam's intellect differs from that of the angels, who are all spiritual. Raphael explains the difference to Adam thusly:
...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. (V.486-490)
Man, being a creature inferior to the angels, is not given innate knowledge to the extent that the angels are but is given instead an intellect which is capable of discovering God's law through, the reasoning process.. Appropriate to his physical state of being, Adam's intellect depends upon the senses for much of the raw material which gees into his reasoning process. Adam understands this process and explains it to Eve in order to reassure her that the very vivid dream she experienced the night before was not real: 81
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 joyning or disjoyning, frames All what we affirm or what deny, and call Our knowledge or opinion. . ■ (V.100-108)
The very vividness of Eve's dream helps to explain the limitation inherent
in this type of intellect. Sense knowledge by itself is not totally
reliable. Man can make misjudgments because sense knowledge is so power
ful that it often makes objective reasonable judgment difficult. This is why Eve can be so taken by her own image in the pool and why Adam can let his passionate experiences with Eve interfere with his judgment about her place in his life.
Adam's purely human limitation in regard to intellect is made clear at various times in Paradise Lost, but it is especially referred to during his conversation with Raphael. The angelic messenger is keenly aware of the fact that he is dealing with a being a step below him on the scale of being. Thus he modifies his conversation in order to treat "what surmounts the reach/Of human sense,... By lik'ning spiritual to corporal forms,/As may express them best" (V.571-574). After using this method successfully to relate the particulars of the war in heaven, Raphael uses it again in his treatment of knowledge and its value for Adam. In a particularly apt comparison considering Adam's place on the hierarchical scale of being Raphael says,
But Knowledge is as food, and needs no less Her Temperance over Appetite, to know In measure what the mind may well contain, Oppresses else with Surfeit, and soon turns Wisdom to Folly, as Nourishment to Winde. (VII.126-130) 82
The full significance of Raphael's comparison has- not to the best of my
knowledge been noticed by critics. For Adam as a human being, "All...
knowledge" appropriately "is as food" because it comes to him as he himself
points out by means of "Reason joyning or disjoyning" "Aerie shapes" [i.e.
sense impressions] "of all external things." Just as all~Adam's knowledge
comes to him through his senses, so everything which comes through Adam's
senses is a kind of knowledge. Even Adam's passion for Eve is knowledge
of a sort. There is, therefore, in Paradise Lost as in Stoic literature
a very fine line between the desire for knowledge and passion. Milton
himself realizes this when he says that Adam is
Led on, yet sinless, with desire to know What neerer might concern him, how this World Of Heav'n and Earth conspicious first began, When, and whereof created, for what cause, What within Eden or without was done Before his memorie, as one whose drouth Yet scarce allay'd still eyes the current streame, Whose liquid murmur heard new thirst excites. (VII.61-68)
Clearly, Milton so often compares knowledge to food and drink because he is conscious of the fact that knowledge, coming to man through the senses as it does, must be controlled just as the desire for food and drink must be controlled
Milton's belief that man has an appetite or thirst for knowledge which is a kind of passion originates in Cicero, who lists man's drive for knowledge as one of the four instincts of the human animal. So powerful
Is man's instinct for learning that it manifests itself even in the actions of little children:
So great is our innate love of learning and of knowledge, that no one can doubt that man's nature is strongly attracted to these things even without 83
the lure of any profit. Do we notice how children cannot be deterred even by punishment from studying and inquiring into the world around them? Drive them away, and back they come. They delight in knowing things; they are eager to impart their knowledge to others; pageants, games and shows of that sort hold them spell-bound, and they will endure hunger and thirst so as to be able to see them.30 (De Finibus V.xviii.48)
Cicero goes on to explain that even the instinct for self-preservation, which is the strongest of all the instincts in other animals, takes second place to man's desire for learning. The very sterotype which men have of the scholar demonstrates that the scholar is generally thought .of as a man wasted away from enduring hunger and thirst and all types of bodily inconvenience just for the sake of learning. So strong is this desire for learning that a man will seek knowledge even when that knowledge might be "a positive disadvantage to its possessor." Therefore Archimedes continued to study the diagram he was drawing in the dust even while his native city was being captured (De Finibus V.xix.SO). For these reasons
Cicero concludes that man has a "passionate love of knowledge."
Precisely because the desire for it is a passion, Cicero believes that knowledge must be controlled. Thus he points out that it is wrong to
waste great enthusiasm and effort on matters which are abstruse, problematical, and at the same time unworthy of consideration,... to be 30This quotation gains in significance when contrasted with a' similar discussion of the young child's learning process in Augustine's Confessions. Augustine, seeing man as a creature of will rather than reason, feels that children have to be driven to knowledge not away from it. Becuase children have rebellious wills, they must be flogged before they will drink from the cup of knowledge (I.xvi.26). 84
so carried away by our eagerness for the truth that we neglect our daily tasks. (De Officiis, I.vi.19)
Seneca too refers to knowledge as a kind of passion, and like Cicero he
points out that to know more than is sufficient for the living of a good
life is a sort of intemperance (Ep. lxxxv.36).
The very close similarity between Milton's and the Stoics' belief
that the desire for knowledge was an appetite which had to be controlled
in order for a man to live a moral life results from their similar beliefs
that human knowledge was mainly th.e result of sense perception. God gives
man senses which present to him every conceivable type of knowledge. He
also gives man a reason which is capable of ordering all this knowledge
and placing it in its proper perspective for the living of a good life.
However, since some types of sense knowledge are stronger than others while not necessarily being more desirable, man must use patient discipline and moderation in order to put all this knowledge into its proper perspective so that it can be acted upon. In this lies man's merit. As Raphael says, "Be lowlie wise:/Think onely what concerns thee and thy being;" (VIII.173-174). Adam expresses perfect agreement with Raphael's admonition, but at the same time he does explain to the heavenly messenger the human condition:
But apt the Mind or Fancie is to roave Uncheckt, and of her.roaving is no end; Till warn'd, or by experience taught, she learne, That not to know at large of things remote From use, obscure and subtle, but to know That which before us lies in daily life, Is the prime Wisdom, what is more, is fume, Or emptiness, or fond impertinence, And renders us in things that most concerne Unparcti.s' d, unprepar'd, and still to seek. (VITT.188-197) 85
In making the correct choice between that knowledge which is useful and
that knowledge which has no use lies Adam’s merit. Milton is very specific
on this point in Areopagitica:
Many there be that complain of divin Providence for suffering Adam to transgress, foolish tongues! when God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing; he had bin else a meer artificiall Adam, such an Adam as he is in the motions... Wherefore did he creat passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that these rightly temper’d are the very ingredients of vertu?... This justifies the high providence of God, who though he command us temperance, justice, continence, yet powrs out before us ev'n to a profusenes all desirable things, and gives us minds that can wander beyond all limit and satiety. (C. E. TV.3198320)
Virtue is not found in glorious acts of heroism, but very simply in knowledge regulated and acted upon. As Seneca says, man’s."first duty is to determine severally what things are worth; the second, to conceive with regard to them a regulated and ordered impulse; the third to make your impulse and your actions harmonize" (Ep.,lxxxix.l4). In the same way, Cicero sees true virtue achieved by man in the reasoned performance of his daily duties, which means not simply acting out those duties but acting them out as a result of recognizing God's divine plan that in all things are harmony and beauty and that you by your actions will do nothing to destroy that harmony and beauty (De Officiis, I.vi.14).
Such activity leads to intellectual and moral growth. In Seneca's words, when reason is followed it grows like a seed: "It is not large to the outward view, but increases as it does its work" (Ep. xxxviii.2).
This kind of growth toward perfection, the slow ripening of the intellectual faculties, is clearly evident in Milton's Adam and Eve before they abort 86
that growth by following the path to sin. Mason Tung remarks that what
has often been overlooked in Milton's presentation of Eve is her growth
in knowledge throughout the poem. At first sight of Adam, Eve turns
away because she finds him less fair than her own image. Later in
reminiscing she confesses that now she has come to learn
How beauty is excelled by manly grace And wisdom which above is truly fair.31 (IV.490-491)
Still later we find Eve discovering that her greatest happiness comes in
being obedient to Adam. At one point in his Meditations Marcus Aurelius
infers that man comes to understand the meaning of divine justice by being
himself just (IX.1). So Eve in Paradise Lost learns the nature of
obedience by being herself obedient. In this activity she finds her
greatest good and also perfects herself.
Adam too is capable of perfecting himself, not so much by direct
obedience as in the case of Eve, but through his ability to reason and
to act morally as a result of that reasoning. We have already seen how
Adam begins to perfect himself immediately after his creation by using his reason to come to an understanding of the existence of God and his own relationship to God. This learning process continues first under the direct tutelage of God Himself and then under that of Raphael. Adam learns from Raphael because the angel points out to Adam those areas in which he needs to strengthen himself. However, even though Raphael is a good teacher, he tends to be a little didactic. God the Father, on the other hand, prefers the Socratic method; he teaches Adam by letting Adam discover the truth by himself.
3-lTung, p. 112. 87
Adam tells us that shortly after his- creation God comes to him in
the garden and has him name all the wild creatures. After completing this
task it suddenly occurs to Adam that a tremendous gulf exists between him
and all these creatures, and by virtue of this gulf he is actually alone.
Thus Adam, "presumptuous," asks God for a mate, explaining,
In solitude What happiness, who can enjoy alone, Or all enjoying, what contentment find?... Among unequals what societie Can sort, what harmonie or true delight? Giv'n and Receiv'd.32 CVTIT.364-366;383-386)
■ With these words Adam begins a debate with God over whether a perfect man
needs companionship. Adam wins the debate by making a distinction
between his own relative perfection and God's absolute perfection. Man, who is perfect "but in degree" (VIII.417), needs a companion to help him propagate his species and to "solace" whatever "defects" he might have.
God's answer to these well phrased objections indicates that He has purposely allowed himself to be drawn into this debate with Adam in order to test the power of Adam's intellect:
I, ere thou spak'st, Knew it not good for Man to be alone, And no such companie as then thou saw'st Intended thee, for trial onely brought, To see how thou could'st judge of fit and meet. (VIII.444-448)
By letting Adam argue with Him, God helps Adam to come to a further I understanding of who he is and what his place is in God's world. God
32Cicero notes that the first step man takes in coming to an under standing of who he is consists, in looking about and noticing how he differs from the rest of the living creatures in the world. Thus man commences to learn the objects for which he was intended by nature ■ (De Finibus W.yv.42). 88
helps Adam perfect his reason by giving him the opportunity to use his
reason. Thus God can say that he finds Adam
Expressing well the spirit within thee free, My Image, not imparted to the Brute. (440-441)
The fact that Adam and Eve are learning as they live in Paradise
does of course answer the objection that Tillyard and Willey raise which
makes the eating of the apple a prerequisite for escaping the boredom of
static prelapsarian perfection. This objection, as we have seen, can be
applied more easily to Augustine's perfect couple than it can be to
Milton's. Augustine's concept of prelapsarian integrity gave Adam and
Eve so much control over their desires that further perfection would
indeed have been difficult. Milton, however, modifies the Augustinian
concept of integrity in such a way that further perfection is not only a
possibility but an absolute necessity. Adam and Eve must perfect them
selves or their reasons will weaken, and they they will fall prey to the
very sense knowledge which they should hold in control.
Moreover, Milton's close following of the Stoics in his belief that
man gains knowledge through his senses rather than through divine inter
vention makes the attaining of perfection rather difficult for Adam and
Eve. They are, after all, physical not angelic beings. Thus it is
difficult for them to order the knowledge presented by the senses on a reasonable scale rather than on a sensual one. God has given Adam the power to make the necessary judgments, but it is not easy for him to do so. Such a task requires an immense dedication to self-discipline and control. Thus if Adam does order knowledge successfully, he deserves merit, but this after all is what makes life worth living. Milton 89
definitely agrees with Seneca that the greatest respect is due to the man
"who has won a victory over the meanness of his own nature, and who has not gently led himself, but has wrestled his way to wisdom" (Ep, lii.6).
Finally, just as he modifies Augustinian integrity, so too does
Milton modify the A.ugustinian belief that Adam and Eve's predisposition to sin lay in a perverse will. Instead he adopts the Stoic position that predisposition to sin is a gradual weakening of the reason which occurs. as a result of mistakes in judgment. Just .as Adam and Eve have a chance to perfect their reasons by judging correctly, so they ultimately weaken their reasons by judging incorrectly. Eve can in some measure be excused for her faulty reasoning, but for Adam, who has been given a reason which is powerful enough to see beyond mere sense knowledge, there is no excuse. Even after Raphael's reiterated warnings, the weakening precess, bom of undisciplined bad judgment continues in Adam and Eve until they become weak enough to allow themselves the ultimate deception of sin. Ill THE FALL AND ITS EFFECTS
The fall of Adam and Eve cannot be separated from their actions
preceding the Fall. In general Milton follows the Stoic pattern for sin
because the eating of the forbidden fruit marks the culmination of a
process which began when Eve failed to recognize her own image in the pool,
and Adam failed to judge correctly concerning his proper relationship
with Eve. This does not mean, however, that the Fall must be described
solely as a mistake in judgment "writ large." Mistakes in judgment
leading to sin occur, as the Stoics taught, because of man’s inability to
discipline himself. It is this growing lack of discipline which finally
leads the soul to think only of itself not of its place in the divine
scheme of things. Such self-thinking is also accounted sinful in
Augustinian theology. Indeed, pride, as it is called, is the root of all
sin according to Augustine.
It is not surprising, therefore, that many scholars following the
Christian tradition in their interpretations of Paradise Lost have sought the motive for Adam and Eve's fall in their pride. C. S. Lewis says, for example, that "the Fall is simply and solely Disobedience-doing what you have been told not to do: and it results from Pride--from being too big for your boots, forgetting your place, thinking that you are God."1
lA Preface to Paradise Lost (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 70-71.
90 91
Douglas Bush comes to the same conclusion, referring to the sin as
pride in one of his works2 and calling it hybris in another.3 Peter Fiore,
writing an Augustinian interpretation of the Fall, naturally sees pride
as the cause of both the sin itself and of Eve's gradual giving way to sin
before her fall.4
Other critics, however, agree with Waldock that it is a little naive
to assume Milton's intention in depicting the Fall was only to display
Adam and Eve's pride. With some justification Waldock contends that
"Augustine's 'pride'...is of reference so broad that it is difficult to
conceive of any independent human activity that might not arguahly be
brought under the ban."5 J. M. Evans assumes the same position pointing
out that it is only the Catholic tradition which tends to see the first
sin as pride. The Protestant tradition to which Milton belonged tended
to regard the sin as "unbelief." To this effect Evans quotes Thomas
Adams' Meditations on the Creed, 1629:
The Romanish stream is altogether for pride, because Satan said, 'Ye shall be as gods'....But this takes away the difference betwixt the sin of man and of the angels. These fell by their own pride immediately, man by temptation unto pride. There was some fault in man before pride, none before it in the apostate spirits.... But we find that Satan's drift was to make man doubt the truth of the commandment and punishment.... Therefore the first sin of the world appears ____ to be infidelity.6 ¿Paradise Lost in Our Time (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1945), p. 48. 2 John Milton (New York: MacMillan, 1964), p. 165. 4"The Influence of Augustine on Milton's Work," Diss. London 1960, p. 117. ^Paradise Lost and Its Critics (Cambridge: University Press, 1961), p. 39. ^Paradise Lost and, the Genesis Tradition, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 279. 92
Milton himself would seem to corroborate Evans' opinion. In Christian
Doctrine, for example, Milton lists eighteen separate violations of the
law which Adam and Eve transgressed by committing original sin. The first
three violations on this list are: "distrust in the divine veracity, and
a proportionate credulity in the assurances of Satan; [and] unbelief"
(C.E'. XV. 181). Pride is also included, but significantly, it comes in
the seventeenth position.
Eve's credulity has not gone unnoticed by scholars. For example,
Tillyard observes that Eve demonstrates "mental triviality" when confronted
by temptation. Hers is a "dreadful unawareness, despite all warnings of
the enormous issues involved."7 John M. Steadman, who analyzes the Fall
in terms of Milton's Artis Logicae, finds the "procatarctic cause" of
Eve's sin in "the devil's 'perswasive words,'" and the "proegumenic cause"
in Eve's "false conception of the 'Vertues' of the forbidden fruit."8
Thus Tillyard's and Steadman's interpretations of Eve's fall substantiate
our analysis of her mental capabilities treated in detail above,9 and at
the same time take us back to the stoic position on sin which makes the
Fall a fatal mistake in judgment occasioned by a number of less serious
but nonetheless damaging mistakes in judgment. Eve is by nature credulous
when she does not have Adam to guide her because she bases all her
judgments on sense perception. It is for this reason that Eve's act can be seen as the result of "dreadful unawareness" or "false conception."
The fact that Milton's exegesis of the Fall can be explained
equally well by such adverse explications as pride and mistaken judgment 7Milton (London: Chatto and Hindus, 1948), p. 261. ^Milton’s Epic Characters (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1959), p. 150. 9See chapter II, 93
should not seem surprising. A. B. Chambers argues that Milton considered
the fall of Adam and Eve as "a prototype and model for every subsequent
sin. As a result, Milton was able to make a didactic statement in
poetic terms, to indicate the universal relevance of this theme without
resorting to moralization."J0 Milton's rhetorical question in Christian
Doctrine, "What sin can be named which. was not included in this one act?"
(C.E. XV.181), would seen to substantiate Chambers' position and should
also serve as a warning to those scholars who try to limit Milton's inter
pretation of the Fall to one particular kind of sin.
It is my contention that in his depiction of the Fall itself Milton
merged the teachings on sin of both the classical and Christian traditions
into a single interpretation. Such a merger incorporated the rather
simplistic notions of sin fostered by Augustine on the one hand and the
equally simplistic ideas of the early Stoics on the other. Augustine's reduction of all sin to pride turns man into a being who is wholly malicious. Every act of sin is an act of hatred and defiance against God and His law. Such a sin, Milton believes, could have been committed by
Satan but not by man:
The first sort by thir own suggestion fell, Self-tempted, self-deprav'd: Man falls deceiv'd By the other first: Man therefore shall find grace, The other none. (III.129-132)
Epictetus representing the extreme Stoic position, on the other hand, sees all sin as simple error. If man were not misinformed about the nature of the good, he would follow the good. This- too is an oversimplified 1Q"The Falls of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost,'' New Essays on Paradise Lost, ed. Thomas Kranidas (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), p. 129. 94
view of sin because it does away with the notion of wrongdoing completely.
No man can be held responsible for that which he does not know. Therefore
Milton follows completely neither Augustine nor the Stoics in his presentation of the Fall but offers instead a reading which makes the best use of both traditions. ■ -
It also seems to me, although it is not my object in this paper to prove it, that it is Milton's artistic balancing of these two interpreta tions of sin which makes his presentation of the Fall so appealing to his readers. Satan with all his pride has a certain appeal, but it is Adam and Eve, who are far more mistaken than they are proud, whom we pity. The perfect tragic plot, says Aristotle, shows a man passing "from happiness to misery; and the cause of it must lie not in any depravity, but in some great error on his part."11 It is in Book IX of Paradise Lost that
Milton plays before us what he considered the greatest tragedy of all time, the fall of man. Milton's ability to involve the ethics of both the classical and Christian traditions in his presentation of this drama truly makes it a drama of universal relevance.
When we first come upon Adam and Eve in Book IX, they have just finished their morning worship and are planning the day's activities. Eve seems to have remembered Adam's statement the night before:
To morrow ere fresh Morning streak the East With first approach of light, we must be ris'n, And at our pleasant labour, to reform Yon flourie Arbors, yonder Allies green, Our walk at noon, with branches overgrown, That mock our scant manuring, and require More hands then ours to lop thir wanton growth. (IV.623-629)
lxThe Poetics, The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), XIII.15. 95
In words that are very much reminiscent of Adam's, Eve suggests that
they divide their labors for the morning:
Adam, well may we labour still to dress This Garden, still to tend Plant, Herb and Flour, Our pleasant task enjoyn'd, but till more hands Aid us, the work under our labour grows, Luxurious by restraint; what we by day Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind, One night or two with wanton growth derides Tending to wilde. Thou therefore now advise Or hear what to my minde first thoughts present, Let us divide our labours, thou where choice Leads thee, or where most needs, whether to wind The Woodbine round this Arbour, or direct The clasping Ivie where to climb, while I In yonder Spring of Roses intermixt With Myrtle, find what to redress till Noon. (IX.205-209)
Joseph Summers observes in quoting these two passages that for Adam the
remark about the garden's getting ahead of them was nothing more than a
casual observation. For Eve, however, Adam's remarks have become a
"source of minor anxiety....[She] seems to wish to get the job done once
for all. She has become more interested in the work itself than in its
place in their lives."12 Mr. Summers' comment is a particularly acute
one. The error he notices in Eve's judgment is the same kind of error
which she has been making throughout the epic. She sees only what her
senses tell her and she reasons accordingly. The place of work in one's
life is determined by insight into God's law not by rational deduction
from sense experiences.
In this connection, John Crowe Ransom makes an observation about
Paradise Lost which he says is not often treated. In the poem Milton
sets up a morality which condemns "the scientific or secular economy": 1¿The Muse rs Method (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 170. 96
Religion is an order of experience under ' which we indulge the compound attitude of fear, respect, enjoyment, and love for the external nature in the midst of which we are forced to live. We are born of earth--why should we spurn it? But in science we cultivate quite a different attitude. Science is an order of experience in which we mutilate and prey upon nature; we seek our practical ~ objections at any cost, and always at the cost . of not appreciating the setting from which we have to take them. Science is quite willing to lose the whole for the sake, of the part.13
If Ransom is correct about Milton's anti-scientific aim, then surely Eve's
superficial mentality makes her the mother of science. The point, however,
is not that Eve fails to appreciate nature but that she possesses the kind
of mind which cannot see the whole for the sake of the part'. Milton was
observant enough to understand that an intellect so limited can only fall
back on what Ransom calls "a ruthless practicality."14 We have seen this
trait evident in Eve on other occasions:
But wherfore all night long shine these, for whom This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes? (IV.657-658)
The same intellect which questions nature's efficiency in allowing the
stars to shine when nobody is awake to see them now points to a lack of
efficiency in another area:
For while so near each other thus all day Our taske we choose, what wonder if so near 13God Without Thunder (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1930), p. 136. My italics. ^Ibid. , p. 138. It should be noted in this connection that Plato's dislike of the Sophists stems from this same objection. Believing that sense perception was the basis of all knowledge, the Sophists held all knowledge to be relative. Thus they naturally felt the only value in knowledge lay in its practical application. Absolute knowledge does not exist, but a man can be successful if he has the ability to make relative knowledge appear absolute. 97
Looks interyene and smiles, or object new Casual discourse draw on, which intermits Our dayes work brought to little, though begun Early, and th'hour of Supper comes unearn'd. (IX.220-225)
Adam answers Eve in the same catechetical way he answered her question
concerning the stars. After praising Eve's practicality,-he explains to
her God's law concerning the relationship of work and pleasure in their
lives:
Yet not so strictly hath our Lord impos'd Labour, as to debarr us when we need Refreshment, whether food, or talk between, Food of the mind, or this sweet intercourse Of looks and smiles, for smiles from Reason flow, To brute deni'd, and are of Love the food, Love not the lowest end of human life. For not to irksom toile, but to delight He made us, and delight to Reason joyn'd. These paths 8 Bowers doubt not but our joynt hands Will keep from Wilderness with ease, as wide As we need walk, till younger hands ere long Assist us. (IX.235-247) ' -
This is all Eve needs to know. Now is the time for Adam to "intermix grateful digressions" and lead Eve off to their morning's labor.
Unfortunately, Adam fails to do this. Instead, he takes this inauspicious moment to delight himself by painting a sentimental verbal picture of himself as Eve's great protector who alone will shelter her from the "malicious Foe" who watches "nigh at hand" to destroy them "by
Sly assault." Adam concludes his speech with the rather maudlin plea:.
leave not the faithful side That gave thee being, still shades thee and protects. The Wife, where danger or dishonour lurks, Safest and seemliest by her Husband staies, Who guards her, or with her the worst endures. (IX.265-269)
Adam's mistake in judgment here lies not in what he is saying, but in the way he is saying it. His place is not to plead with Eve but to direct her. 98
Milton underscores the disastrous effects which such uxoriousness can
produce by the use of irony. In a few- moments Satan will also assume a
protective attitude in order to tempt Eve to sin:
The Tempter, but with shew of Zeale and Love To Man, and indignation at his wrong, New part puts on, and as to passion mov'd, - Fluctuats disturbd, yet comely and in act Rais'd, as of som great matter to begin. (IX.665-669)
It is ironic, of course, that Eve would listen to a snake who offers his
"Zeale and Love" after just having taken offense at her husband's offer
of love and protection. The irony, however, makes a telling point. While
both Adam and Satan adopt the same attitude toward Eve, Satan does so
forcefully. He leads her by means of his superior intellect while Adam
resigns his superiority to plead with her. Because of his uxoriousness,
Adam has already forgotten Raphael's timely advice on how to handle a
woman:
Oft times nothing profits more Then self esteem, grounded on just and right Well mang'd; of that skill the more thou knowtst, The more she will acknowledge thee her Head. CVIII.571-574)
If there is any one quality which Satan possesses in his dealings with Eve, it is self-esteem. Adam through femininity of mind abandons self-esteem.
Thus it is to Satan and not to Adam that Eve "yield[sj all her shows."
The hint of uxoriousness in his first speech sets the tone for the rest of the fatal dialogue between Adam and Eve. No doubt wrongly, but
In a sense justifiably, Eve immediately seizes the initiative from her husband and accuses him of doubting her firmness in the face of temptation. in a sense the accusation is ironic because firmness- in the face of 99
temptation is exactly the quality Adam needs at the present moment.
Instead, "domestick Adam" answers "with healing words," idealistically
painting a verbal picture of Eve which exists only in his imagination not
in reality:
For hee who tempts, though in vain, at least asperses The tempted with dishonour foul,... thou thy self with scorne And anger wouldst resent the offer'd wrong, Though ineffectual found. (IX.296-301)
Adam is so busy trying to pamper Eve in order to make amends, for his
unintentional slight that he is no longer making any sense, and Eve is
quick to perceive this. She knows that temptation "sticks no dishonour" on the person being tempted but rather offers one the opportunity to gain
"double honour." Moreover, if Eve will resist temptation so easily as Adam idealistically implies, then it does not make sense that she should be confined to his side. Thus Eve presses vigorously her decision to work alone.
Summers remarks in describing Eve’s attitude that "she is now intent on the separation as an opportunity to prove that she is Adam's intellectual equal and that, alone, she is invulnerable."15 Summers' observation makes a great deal of sense for two reasons. For the first time in her life, Eve has seen Adam make logical mistakes which she is able to correct. If she is able to correct her husband, then there must be some measure of equality between them. Secondly, . in his attempt to mollify Eve, Adam has been flattering her so highly that she naturally wants an opportunity to prove that she is what he says she is. Nevertheless,
iSyhe Muse’s Method, p. 171. 100
Eve in her desire to prove herself equal to Adam has finally reached the
state where bad judgment is turning to defiance of God's law. Eve knows
what God has ordained:
God is thy Law, thou mine: to know no more Is womans happiest knowledge and her praise. . CIV-637-638)
Eve's desire to raise herself above her station in life by proving herself
equal to her husband can be described by no better word than pride. Eve's
language most assuredly points to this fault:
If this be our condition, thus to dwell In narrow circuit strait'nd by a Foe, Suttle or violent, we not endu'd Single with like defence, wherever met, How are we happie, still in fear of harm? (IX.322-326)
This new attitude in which Eve sees the garden as a "narrow circuit" contrasts vividly with her attitude in Book IV when after listing the vast array of pleasures which make up Paradise, she concludes that none of them "without thee is sweet." Then her love for Adam, made, as John
Donne says, "one little room, an every where;" and Eve found happiness in a world contracted. The moment pride begins to enter Eve's heart, however, the whole garden becomes a "narrow circuit," and staying with Adam suddenly makes her feel "strait'nd." Although Seneca never explicitly refers to pride as a cause of sin, he does describe Eve's new state of mind rather well when he speaks of the pampered soul making itself miserable because it must have "unbounded space for its excursions"
(Ep. xxxix.6). Once the soul has reached such a state, Seneca says that it has lost its freedom and has become "a slave to any circumstance, to any constraint, to any chance" (Ep. li.9). One can hardly escape the 101
feeling that the "much deceav'd, much failing, hapless Eve," who finally
does win her freedom from Adam, is in exactly that predicament.
Adam is finally roused to righteous indignation by Eve's attitude
and responds "fervently:"
0 Woman, best are all things as the will ~ Of God ordain'd them, his creating hand Nothing imperfet or deficient left Of all that he Created, much less Man, Or aught that might his happie State secure, Secure from outward force; with, himself The danger lies, yet lies within his power: Against his will he can receave no harme. (IX.342-348)
Seek not temptation then, which to avoide Were better, and most likelie if from mee Thou sever not: Trial will come unsought. Wouldst thou approve they Constance, approve First they obedience; th' other who can know, Not seeing the attempted, who attest? (IX.364-369)
Adam at last says all the things he should have said in the first place.
What is more, his remark about obedience being the very hallmark of constancy cuts to the heart of the argument which Eve has constructed.
It reminds her of her place in God's hierarchy which Adam's original weakness and her own pride momentarily allowed her to forget. Eve now has no alternative but to discontinue her argument and accompany Adam into the garden. For her to do otherwise would be outright disobedience.
But suddenly, for seemingly no reason at all, Adam returns to the same sentimental, idealistic outlook which allowed th.eir debate to begin in the first place:
But if thou think, trial unsought may finde Us both securer then thus warnd thou seemst, Go; for thy stay, not free, absents thee more; Go in thy native innocence, relie 102
On what thous- hast of vertue, summon all, For God towards thee hath done his part, do thine. (IX.370-375)
Milton underscores Adam's faulty judgment horn of excessive idealism for
the woman he loves with rigorous irony. "Native innocence" is no proof
against sophistry. Indeed, it was Eve's "native innocence" which allowed
her to look in the pool and take the image there for real. Moreover,
God surely has done his part toward Eve. Since she has an intellect
which can form judgments only on what it perceives through the senses,
God has decreed that Eve should be guided by her husband. God has done
his part, but Adam fails to do his. Therefore Eve really will have to
summon up all her virtue when tempted by Satan, because her intellect will be powerless to compete with Satan's ability to control every bit of
sense knowledge presented to her. Adam has figuratively thrown Eve to
the serpent. His reasons for such an act are summarized very well by
Summers: I In his anxiety about Eve's attitude toward him, in his passion which makes him wish to see her as absolute and superior to himself, he dismisses his knowledge and his reason. He sees the question of their separation not as potentially involving Eve's (and his) destruction, but as if it merely concerned whether she is ’with him' at this moment. He is and he knows he is Eve's protector; but now he cares more for her immediate approval of him than he does for her ultimate safety; he prefers the risk of her destruction to the risk of her momentary resentment.16
The faulty judgment born of undisciplined love which Raphael warned Adam about has finally caused him to make a serious moral error.
Patrides contends that Milton and his contemporaries regarded Eve
l&The Muse's Method, p. 174. 103
as partly fallen before she ate the forbidden fruit. She was prejudiced
towards Satan's arguments because being a woman she was already
preoccupied with herself to a dangerous degree.17 Evans agrees and traces
the notion of Eve's susceptibility to sin back to what might be a
misinterpretation of Saint Augustine.18 Thus Milton's depiction of the
disagreement scene between Adam and Eve maintains tradition in two ways.
First, Milton upholds contemporary belief concerning Eve's susceptibility
to pride before the Fall because his Eve is momentarily overcome by pride
during her discussion with Adam. However, Milton does not take the
position typical for his time that vanity was a characteristic trait of
the female personality. Instead, Milton makes Eve's pride as much Adam's
fault as it is Eve's because it is Adam's noticeable weakness that leads
Eve to believe in her equality. Second, Eve's susceptibility to sin is
further stressed by the fact that the Eve whom Adam sends out to meet
Satan has no chance of intellectually overcoming any temptation offered
by such a superior foe.
This latter idea is reinforced by Milton's simile comparing Eve to
Pomona and the virgin Ceres:
Thus saying, from her Husbands hand her hand . Soft she withdrew, and like a Wood-Nymph light Oread or Dryad, or of Delia 's Traine,... Likeliest she seemd, Pomona when she fled Vertumnus, or to Ceres in her Prime, Yet.Virgin of Proserpina from Jove. (IX.385-388;394-397)
Milton reminds us of the coming fall by alluding to the Ceres-Proserpine myth, because the rape of Proserpine is "another of the main mythic
17Milton and the Christian Tradition, p. 105. 1 ^Paradise Lost and. the Genesis Tradition, p. 2.75. 104
analogues to the Fall."19 However, 'Milton's allusion to Pomona not only
reminds us of Eve's fall But also of the way in which she is destined to
fall. Pomona was seduced by the satyr Vertumnus Because she was not
percipient enough to see through his disguise as- an old woman. Even when
the satyr began to.kiss and fondle her "in a way in which"an old woman
never would have done,"20 Pomona still remained ignorant of his intentions.
As Pomona is before Vertumnus, so Eve is before Satan. Satan's
intellectuality is far above Eve's mere feminine mentality. Thus
Professor Waldock has made a rather shrewd observation when he says that
Eve's only defense against Satan would have been an absolutely closed mind.21 This, in a way, is exactly Milton's point. In the long run it does not take reason to overcome temptation but the ability to discipline oneself, the ability to know. This point is made abundantly clear in
Paradise Regained when Christ though hungry from fasting refuses to eat of the fare far more sumptuous than "that crude Apple that diverted Eve" which Satan sets before him. Christ meets this temptation with a closed mind. He does not attempt to reason with any of the very excellent arguments which Satan uses to tempt him to eat. All of those arguments are either true or partly true, so to argue with them would most certainly put Christ into the exact position Satan wants. Instead Christ does what
Eve should have done; he replies "temperately":
1 can at will, doubt not, as soon as thou, Command a Table in this Wilderness, And call swift flights of Angels ministrant Array'd in Glory on my cup to attend:
l^The Poems of John Milton, ed. John Carey and Alastair Fowler (London: Longmans, 1968), p. 878. 2°0vid, 'Métamorphoses, trans. Mary-M. Innés (Baltimore: Penguin Classics, 1967), p. 329. ^Paradise Lost and Its Critics, p. 36. 105
Why shouldst thou then obtrude this diligence, In vain, where no acceptance it can find, And with my- hunger what has- thou to do? (11.585-589)
The contrast between Christ's and Eve's reactions to temptation is, as
we shall see, most striking.
Satan first spies Eve alone laboring to support some flowers which
"hung drooping unsustain'd," and like Adam, who was mesmerized into
misjudgment by Eve's apparent innocence and beauty, so too Satan becomes
in his admiration of Eve "stupidly good" for a moment. However, unlike
Adam, Satan realizes what has to be done and quickly regains complete
control of himself. It is very important for Satan to be supremely self-
assured and confident, which he is throughout the temptation, because the
success of his endeavor depends on his ability to deceive Eve. If he can
delude Eve into thinking more of herself than she does of God's law, then
he can also delude her into the mistaken judgment that the fruit of an
earthly tree can do more for her than God can. The fraud will be easy if
Eve is senseless enough to listen to his argument, for heaven has always been for Eve "high, high and remote from" the earthly images by which she makes all her judgments.
The moment Satan utters his first flattering words calculated to make Eve think more highly of herself than she should, it becomes obvious that Eve will judge in this instance as she has always judged. For her it is the "wonder" of a talking serpent that "claims attention due" not what that serpent is saying. Francis Bacon describes quite accurately the state of mind which now causes Eve to listen to the words of Satan: 106
But by far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds • from the dulness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses; in that things which strike the sense outweigh things which do not immediately strike it, though they be more important. Hence it is that speculation commonly ceases where sight ceases; insomuch that of things invisible there is little or no observation.22’
As Satan develops his "wily" performance, Milton underscores Eve's failure
to understand what she sees with comments on her credulity:
So talk'd the spirited sly Snake; and Eve Yet more amaz'd unwarie thus reply'd. (IX.613-614) £•&******** So glister'd the dire Snake, and into fraud Led Eve our credulour Mother, to the Tree Of prohibition, root of all our woe. (IX.643-645)
Satan has been clever enough to arouse Eve's curiosity:
by leaving the identity of the magical tree in some doubt...[he] waits until she is thoroughly excited before taking her to see it. Not until they come within sight of it does she realize that it is the one tree forbidden to her. The temptation proper thus begins with Eve already in a mood of frustrated anticipation.23
In such a state Eve is ready for the grand finale of Satan's performance, the impassioned, beautifully reasoned, classical oration. As I have already indicated, Satan's execution of this oration is every bit as important as what he says therein. Satan, for the moment, is able to act as Adam should have acted. He is self-assured, forceful and totally in command of the situation. Eve respects him as much as his argument, and therefore never dreams of asking, "And with our freedom, what hast thou
zZEovum Organum, Selected Writings of Francis Bacon, ed. Hugh G. Dick (New York: Modern Library-, 1955), p. 474. 23Evans, p. 277. 107
to do?" Instead:
His words replete with guile Into her heart too easie entrance won: Fixt on the Fruit she gaz'd, which to behold Might tempt alone, and in her ears the sound Yet rung of his persuasive words, impregn'd With Reason, to her seeming, and with Truth,. (My italics. IX.733-738)
It should be noted that Eve is affected by the sound of Satan's speech as much as she is by the argument he presents.
Satan's task is now finished. The rest is up to Eve. Forgetting her place as one of God's creatures, she weighs the pros and cons of disobedience:
Great are thy Vertues, doubtless, best of Fruits, Though kept from Man, and worthy to be admir'd, Whose taste, too long forbom, at first assay Gave elocution to the mute, and taught The tongue not made for Speech to speak thy praise: Thy praise hee also who forbids thy use, Conceales not from us, naming thee the Tree Of Knowledge, knowledge both of good and evil; Forbids us then to taste, but his forbidding Commends thee more, while it inferrs the good By thee communicated, and our want: For good unknown, sure is not had, or had And yet unknown, is as not had at all. In plain then, what forbids he but to know, Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise? Such prohibitions binde not. But if Death Bind us with after-bands, what profits then Our inward freedom? In the day we eate Of this fair Fruit, our doom is, we shall die. How dies the Serpent? hee hath eat'n and lives, And knows, and speaks, and reason, and discerns, Irrational till then. For us alone Was death invented? or to us deni'd This intellectual food, for beasts reserv'd? For Beasts it seems: yet that one Beast which first Hath tasted, envies not, but brings with joy The good befall'n him, Author unsuspect, Friendly to man, farr from deceit or guile. What fear I then, rather what know to feare Under this ignorance of good and Evil, 108
Of God or Death, of Law- or Penaltie? Here grows the Cure of all, this Fruit Divine, Fair to the Eye, inviting to the Taste, Of vertue to make wise: what hinders then To reach, and feed at once both Bodie and Mind? (IX.745-779)
I have quoted this passage in its entirety because its length has much to
do with its poetic effect. As Evans notes, Eve's thoughts seem like her
hand in that they reach out toward the fruit, "only to recoil when she
remembers the prohibition."24 The emphasis in the speech then is clearly
on Eve's reasoning process. Eve uses her reason to place herself above
God's law. There is certainly pride in this activity-, but as Eve's
mental operations prove, her sin is a fault of the reason, not of the
will as Augustine believed. She does indeed make a fatal mistake.
In recognizing this same distinction between a sin of the reason
and a sin of the will, Clarence Green contends that Eve is not totally
at fault because she is only doing what every good humanist should do.
Given the facts at hand, she reasons her way to a decision:
Convinced of the 'magic virtue of the fruit' she cannot 'easily' abstain from eating. Indeed, qua Humanist she is bound not to abstain. The critics who have condemned Eve's conduct have done so at times a little too readily.25
Since Eve's sin is hardly a grievous fault, Green concludes that "Milton's thought is mangled on the horns of its own dilemma."26 Milton is a humanist torn between the Platonic and the biblical traditions which he finds very difficult to reconcile with one another.27 Mr, Green of
2tParadise Lost and the Genesis Tradition, p. 281. 25"The Paradox of the Fall in Paradise Lost," MLN, LIII (1938), 568. 2aIbid., p. 569. 27Ibid. , p. 570. 109
course forgets Christ's actions in Paradise Regained when He was
confronted with the same temptation Eve is forced to undergo. Christ,
though still a good humanist, knew that there is a time to reason and a
time to simply say no. One does not have to look very far for further
confirmation of Milton's attitude on this point. Milton.opens Book X of
Paradise Lost with the comment that Adam and Eve are no less culpable for
their sin because they fell deceived:
For still they knew, and ought to have still remember'd The high Injunction not to taste that Fruit, Whoever tempted; which they not obeying, Incurr'd, what could they less, the penaltie, And manifold in sin, deserv'd to fall. (X.12-16)
Moreover, while discussing scripture and its relation to Christian
Liberty in Christian Doctrine, Milton says that man may use his reason on
all things except those about which God has directly spoken. Those
essential things should remain free "from the perplexities of controversy;
what is mysterious would be suffered to remain inviolate, and we should
be fearful of overstepping the bounds of propriety in its investigation"
(C.E. , XV.265). What could be more essential than God's direct command
not to eat of the forbidden fruit?
Eve's reasoning is therefore not reasoning in the true sense but only
rationalizing. Milton emphasizes this trait by constructing Eve's speech
with various schematic sentence devices. For example, one finds
anadiplosis ("The tongue not made for Speech to speak thy praise:/Thy praise hee also who forbids thy use”); anaphora ("Forbids us good, forbids us to be wise"); and isocolon ("of God or death, of law or penalty"). The
artificiality of the language throughout the passage suggests the specious 110
quality of Eve's logic. She is clearly looking for justification of
disobedience, not for the discovery of truth. Milton also underplays Eve's
physical appetite as she reasons her way to death. The apple is plainly
branded as- "intellectual food." However, the moment that Eve takes the
first bite of fruit, the effects of concupiscence overwhelm her:
Intent now wholly on her taste, naught else Regarded, such delight till then, as seemd, In Fruit she never tasted, whether true Or fansied so, through expectation high Of knowledg, nor was God-head from her thought. Greedily she ingorg'd without restraint, And knew not eating Death. (IX.786-792)
Eve’s gluttonous appetite contrasts with her extremely rational state
which immediately preceded the first bite of fruit, and this contrast
serves to make more vivid the fact that Eve's sin was born in her intellect
and not in her will.
As we have demonstrated, Milton's depiction of Eve's sin cannot be
tied to any single interpretation but is, as Milton intended, a prototype
for all sin. Basically the sin follows the Stoic pattern of a disastrous
error in judgment preceded by a number of less significant but none the
less damaging errors which are caused by the individual's failure to discipline himself properly.28 On the other hand, Milton also follows
the Augustinian tradition in that Eve's sin is, in a way, the result of pride. The errors which Eve makes do not become serious until she becomes self-seeking. Moreover, one can easily see in Eve's sin a host of other
faults listed by Milton in Christian Doctrine. She most certainly demonstrates "unbelief; ingratitude" and "disobedience" in her rejection
28See especially: Seneca, Ep., VIII.5. Ill
of God's law while her flaunting of Adam's wishes does- indeed constitute
"a want of proper regard for her husband" (C.E, XV.181). As we shall see,
Adam's sin too follows the basic Stoic pattern, containing as it does, a
strong element of Augustinian pride;
Many scholars find it very difficult to call Adam's act a sin at all.
Tillyard comments that "Adam's powers are in no way roused; he merely
voices the natural human instinct of comradeship with his kind.”29 Ralegh
calls the sin "a single act of unselfishness,"30 Waldock says that Adam's
fall points up an unreasonable incongruity in the poem. The poem asks us
to believe that Adam did wrong and right at the same time.31 Green does
not see how it is possible for Adam's act to be treated as sin:
It is only his noble human love for Eve that prompts his violation of the Divine prohibition, And love it is, I think—not passion in its baser sense, not lust—that prompts him.32
Green makes an error here which is not uncommon among those scholars
looking for an explanation of Adam's sin. He feels that in order for
something to be termed a passion it must in some way be base. Thus
"passion" is used to describe states of mind like lust and sensuality,
while "noble human love,” no matter how excessive it is, belongs in a
class by itself. It cannot by definition be a passion. Denis Saurat makes much the same kind of judgment in his interpretation of Adam's sin
in Paradise Lost, but he reverses the process a little. He clearly recognizes that Adam's sin seems to exemplify "passion triumphant over reason," and he quotes Raphael's warning to Adam, "Take heed lest passion
¿¿Milton, p. 262. ^Milton, p. 148, 31 Paradise Lost and. Its Critics, p. 56. 32"The Paradox of the Fall...," p. 568. 112
sway/Thy judgment to do ought which, else free will/Would not admit," and
Milton's statement in the pamphlet against monarchy that men too often are
not governed by their reasons but by "blind affections within," to
substantiate his interpretation.33 Having taken this position, Saurat
goes on to identify the particular passion which has- enslaved Adam as
"sensuality."34 By so particularizing the passion, Saurat manages to
debase it to a form of lust.
The point which some scholars fail to realize is that Milton did not
necessarily regard passion as something ignoble. As we demonstrated in
the previous chapter, the fact that Adam and Eve had passions, as far as
Milton was concerned, did not lessen their prelapsarian integrity.35
Certain types of passion, such as a desire for knowledge or a love of one's wife, only make a man human, not bad. Like the Stoics, however,
Milton believed that when any passion is allowed to overcome one's reason, the result is sin. We have previously seen Adam in what Seneca calls a state of commotion. Although not having committed sin as such, Adam, because of his love for Eve, finds himself unable to play the part in their relationship which God has designed for him. His soul tossed "on the sea of affection...has ceased to be an orderly whole." However, the moment Eve tells Adam she has eaten the forbidden fruit, Adam allows his love for Eve to overcome his reason. Milton's poetry clearly indicates that inwardly Adam's reason is being "carried swiftly along, as it were, on a rushing stream of passion" (Seneca, Ep.lxxxv.6):
33Milton, Man and Thinker (New York: The Dial Press-, 1925), p. 151. 34Saurat, p. 152. 35See pages 59 ff. 113
0 fairest of Creation, last and best Of all Gods works, Creature in whom excell’d Whatever can to sight or thought be formd, Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet! How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost, Defac't, deflourd, and now to Death devote? Rather how hast thou yeelded to transgress The strict forbiddance, how to violate The sacred Fruit forbidd'n! som cursed fraud Of Enemie hath beguil'd thee, yet unknown, And mee with thee hath ruind, for with thee Certain my resolution is to Die; How can I live without thee, how forgoe Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly joyn'd, To live again in these wilde Woods forlorn? Should God create another Eve, and I Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee Would never from my heart; no no, I feel The Link of Nature draw me; Flesh of Flesh, Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe. CIX.896-916)
The type of sin which Adam is now in the process of committing is described quite fully by Seneca in a much maligned chapter of De dementia.
After observing that the good man will try to aid another man in his suffering rather than join him in it, Seneca goes on to discuss what he considers a "mental defect" in some men, the vice of pity:
Consequently, as religion honors the gods, while superstition wrongs them, so all good men will display clemency and gentle dealing, but will avoid pity; for it is the failing of a weak nature that succumbs to the sight of other's ills. And so it is most often seen in tie poorest type of persons: these are old women and wretched females who are moved by the tears of the worst criminals, who, if they could, would break open their prisons. Pity regards only the plight, not the cause of it; whereas clemency agrees with reason.36 cn.v.i)
36pord Lewis Battles and André Malan Hugo, Calvin’s Commentary on Seneea’s De Clementia (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), p. 361. Quotations from De Clementia. will hereafter be identified in the text. 114
As his example indicates, pity- in a man is a mark of "effeminacy- of mind."
In such a state, a man becomes so carried away by his own emotions that
he is unable to use his reason. The problem with this particular "sick
ness of the mind" (II.v.4) is that it robs man of the ability to help
the person he pities. ~
What comes from a troubled source is never clear and pure. For sorrow is not adopted to the discernment of fact, to the discovery of expe dients, to the avoidance of dangers, or to fair judgment. He [the good man], consequently, will not feel pity, because even without mental suffering he does all else that those do who feel pity. (Il.vi.l)
John Calvin, writing on this passage, comments that Christianity finds
Seneca's logic here "more subtle than true." Christians, he notes, have
always felt that pity is a virtue because without it no man would be moved to help another. To this effect Calvin quotes Augustine: "What then is pity, but a compassion in our hears for another's misery, by which we are compelled to give whatever help we can" (City of God IX.5).37
Christianity would perhaps have found Seneca's analysis of pity more acceptable had he made a distinction between pity in general and excessive pity.
Nevertheless, the effects occasioned by what Seneca refers to as the
"mental defect" of pity are exactly the same effects which result from
A.dam's "noble human love." When noble human love gains complete control of the reason, it becomes excessive human love, and in Adam's case it robs him not only of his ability to help Eve but also of his ability to keep himself from sin. Ralegh makes the interesting observation that Milton 3
37Battles, p. 367. 115
believed woman was made for private virtue and man was made for public
virtue.38 If so, Adam's inability to help Eve is his second consecutive
failure in public virtue. He first fails Eve when he allows- her to leave
him and work alone. Now he fails in his responsibility to her again.
Instead of rousing Eve to sorrow for her sin and then acting as her
mediator with God by praying to God for her forgiveness, Adam seeks refuge
in despair. He is so completely overcome by the sight of Eve's ills, that
he desires to join her in misery rather than help her out of it. His
uxoriousness has robbed him of the ability to "discover expedients,"
"to discern the facts," "to make a fair judgment" concerning the situation
he now faces. Milton most certainly would have agreed with Seneca's
belief that the proof of love lies not in the emotions but in the reason
(Ep. lxiii.10). Seneca's description of the womanish soul in mourning
also approximates Adam's state of mind when he sins:
We are accustomed to watch them that we may prevent them from making a wrong use of loneliness. No thoughtless person ought to be left alone; in such cases he only plans folly, and heaps up danger for himself. (Ep. x.2)
Unfortunately for Adam, Raphael is no longer around to tell him where his duty lies.
In De Clementia Seneca makes another implication about the vice of pity which is at first a little difficult to apprehend. Pity, he implies, is oftentimes occasioned by "self-interest" (II.v.3). Seneca explains this point in greater detail in the epistles when he says that a man who weeps for a departed friend more often weeps for himself than for his dead
3%Milton, p. 149. 116
loved one. "There is an element of self-seeking even in our sorrow"
(lxiii.2). What the Stoics referred to as self-seeking, Christianity-
under the tutelage of Augustine and later Thomas Aquinas has translated
into self-love or pride. Self-love, as we have shown, certainly plays an
important part in Eve's sin, but Adam's sin seems somehow- different because
he appears to be thinking of Eve not of himself. Yet if one looks closely
at what Adam says, it becomes clear that his motive for sin, just like
Eve's, is basically self-love:
How can I live without thee, how forgo Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly joyn'd, To live again in these wilde Woods forlorn? Should God create another Eve, and I Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee Would never from my heart. (IX.908-913)
Adam is not thinking of Eve; he is thinking of himself. Adam's motive for
eating the apple is not real love (Eve, how can I help you?), but a
quasi-suicide attempt which will allow him to end his own misery. Thus
Adam puts his inordinate love of their conjugal relationship above his
real love for Eve, above his love for everything except himself, and this
by every classical and Christian standard is not noble human love but
Irrational behavior and pride.
Milton is specific in Christian Doctrine concerning the effects of
original sin. "After sin came death, as the calamity of punishment
consequent upon it” (C.E. XV.203). Milton goes on to specify that he
means here not only physical death but also spiritual death, "by which is meant the loss of divine grace, and that of innate righteousness, wherein man in the beginning lived unto God" (XV.205). This latter death consists 117
in "the obscuration...of... right reason" and is a "slavish subjection to
sin and the devil" which is the hallmark of concupiscence (XV. 207).
Earlier in the chapter, Milton had defined concupiscence as "the desire
of sinning" and described it with a quotation from Virgil: "Mars sees
her, seeing he desires, desiring he enjoys her" (XV. 193)
Milton very much brings Virgil's lines to life in his presentation
of Adam and Eve's sexual activity immediately following the Fall. Eve
feeling "the agony of love till now not felt" and Adam inflamed by "carnal
desire" begin to cast "lascivious Eyes" on one another:
In Lust they burne: Till Adam thus 'gan Evs to dalliance move. (IX.1015-1016)
Interestingly enough, Adam suddenly fancies himself a wit. He puns on
Eve's "taste" and hints that after such a delicious meal one ought to
exercise a bit. The point which Milton seems to be making with Adam's
farcical behavior is that while Adam believes his reasoning ability has
been heightened by sin, it has actually been degraded.39 For the first
time in his life, Adam uses his reason as the tool of his passion. Before
he sinned, Adam employed his wit to move Eve to understand God's law;
now he employs it to move her to dalliance.
After they make love, Adam and Eve are "wearied with thir amorous play" (IX.1045) which is a sign that their passions are now carrying them
beyond the bounds of reason. They have made love so immoderately that it
exhausts them, and they become, as it were, sexual gluttons.40 Milton's
39Thomas Blackburn, "Uncloister'd Virtue: Adam and Eve in Milton's Paradise," Milton Studies, III (1971), p. 126. 40For a thorough analysis contrasting Adam and Eve's sexual behavior before and after the Fall, see: Summers, The Muse’s Method, pp. 104ff. 118
depiction of the degradation of Adam and Eve's intellects and of the
transformation of their love into lust clearly follows Augustine's inter
pretation of the after effects of the Fall
The fact is that the soul, which had taken perverse delight in its own liberty and disdained the service of God, was now deprived of its original mastery over the body; because it had deliberately deserted the Lord who was over it, it no longer bent to its vzill the servant below it, being unable to hold the flesh completely in subjection as would always have been the case, if only the soul had remained subject to God. From this moment, then, the flesh began to lust against the spirit. (City of God XIII.13)
There are, however, many other kinds of lust than carnal passion (City of
Cod XIV.15), and our first parents, having lost their integrity through sin, now experience all these as well. Because their reasons are now so weak that they cannot control desire, the "high passions" of "Anger, Hate,
Mistrust, Suspicion and Discord" well up in them:
Thus they in mutual accusation spent The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning, And of thir vain contest appeer'd no end. (IX.1187-1190)
Milton continues to illustrate the degradation of Adam's and Eve's power to reason when Christ comes to judge them in Book X. Christ finds the sinful pair "discountnanc't," "discomposed" and suffering a welter of uncontrollable and simultaneous emotions:
Love was not in thir looks, either to God Or to each other, but apparent guilt, And shame, and perturbation, and despaire, Anger, and obstinacie, and hate, and guile. (X.111-114)
In such a state Adam is unable to reason, so that his responses to Christ's
Questioning are incoherent, inconsistent, illogical and overly- passionate. 119
Adam's perturbed accusation of Eve ironically recalls the scene in Book
VIII where Adam reasonably and logically- argued for a mate. Then Adam
asked for a "help mate” to "solace his defects" (VIII.418) and to relieve
the tedious life he, a rational creature, would be forced to undergo with
no rational companion like himself because "the brute cannot be human
consort" (VIII.392). In the state of sin Adam now unreasonably and
bitterly accuses the help mate he once reasonably desired:
This Woman whom thou mad'st to be my help, And gav'st me as- thy perfet gift, so good, So fit, so acceptable, so Divine, That from her hand I could suspect no ill, And what she did, whatever in it self, Her doing seem'd to justifie the deed; Shee gave me of the Tree, and I did eate. (X.137-143)
So bereft of reason is Adam's mind that he does not seem to realize that by accusing Eve in such a manner he is only accusing himself. This Christ points out by rebuking Adam as Raphael had once before rebuked him:
Was shee thy God, that her thou didst obey Before his voice, or was Shee made thy guide, Superior, or but equal, that to her Thou did'st resigne thy Manhood, and the Place Wherein God set thee above her made of thee, And for thee, whose perfection farr excell'd Hers in all real dignitie: Adornd Shee was indeed, and lovely to attract Thy Love, not thy Subjection, and her Gifts Were such as under Government well seem'd, Unseemly to beare rule, which was thy part And person, had'st thou known thy self aright. (X.145-156)
In the fall of Adam, Milton has presented us with a Senecan rather than Augustinian portrait of man falling into sin. Adam does not know himself "aright" because he forsakes his manhood for effeminacy of mind.
He gradually allows his- undisciplined love for Eve to overcome his reason. 120
This results, first of all, in a serious- moral misjudgment whereby Adam
idealistically judges Eve to be more sufficient than she actually is:
And perhaps I also err'd in overmuch admiring What seemd in thee so perfet, that I thought No evil durst attempt thee, but I rue That errour now, which, is become my crime.- (IX.1177-1182)
Adam's bad judgment results, of course, in Eve's going off alone where she is an easy prey for Satan's guile. Secondly, after Eve falls, Adam's
excessive love for her drives him to an act of madness. He impulsively eats the apple in order to die with Eve instead of using his reason in an attempt to save her. As we have seen, Seneca considered such loss of rational control the most advanced stage of sin. Perhaps it is inaccurate to assume that Milton was advocating the Stoic doctrine of complete inward detachment which Seneca so often praises. Yet it cannot be denied that Adam's actions on this occasion do not spring from rational judgment but are instead the product of a mind overcome by what Zeno calls TrctSoi , "an irrational and unnatural disturbance of the mind."41
Eve's sin also follows the Stoic pattern because her senses lead her to make an error in judgment. Because of Satan's deception, Eve judges the forbidden fruit to be of immense value to her, when in reality the fruit can do her nothing but harm. However, Milton Christianizes this interpretation of sin by adding to it the element of pride which Seneca hints at but which he never fully develops in his epistles.. Eve makes a mistake in judgment, but that mistake is the direct result of her desire to raise herself to a higher station in life than God had planned for her.
^iQuoted by E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), p. 256, n. 12. 121
This is clearly an example of what Augustine so often calls "inordinate exaltation."
It is perhaps not surprising that Milton follows Augustine very closely in his description of the immediate effects of sin. As Evans notes, Augustine's exegesis of the effects of sin constituted his "most significant and lasting contribution to the history of the Fall story."42
Thus Milton's Adam and Eve lose their integrity, suffer concupiscence and find themselves overcome by shame. How they rise from this state of shame to what Milton calls a "far more excellent state of grace and glory"
(C.E. XV.251) will be the subject of the next chapter.
^¿Paradise Lost and the Genesis Tradition, p. 98. IV REPENTANCE AND REGENERATION
Milton's treatment of Adam and Eve's repentance does not at first
glance appear to be Stoic. Though thej'fall into sin through their own
errors and it is they and they alone who are responsible for the undisciplined, faulty judgments which little by little weaken them so
that they commit sin, Milton describes Adam and Eve's repentance occurring not as a result of their own efforts, but because of God's "prevenient grace." Since the Stoics believed that sin was a sickness of the mind whereby man judged by appearances rather than by reason, they taught that man could become whole again only by gradually regaining his right reason.1 Charles Cochrane contends that Christianity radically changed this concept. The rebirth of the carnal man into the spiritual man had nothing to do with reason but was the result of God's grace alone,2
There is nothing in all of classical philosophy which approximates the
Christian concept of grace. Milton, of course, follows the Christian tradition in making Adam and Eve's repentance the result of God's grace.
However, Milton's concept of repentance involves more than a simple state of mind initiated in Adam and Eve by God. He still follows the
Stoic tradition, in that Adam does not become truly repentant until he is once again able to act in accordance with right reason. Thus Adam's
J-For a detailed description of this regenerative process far too long to quote here, see the Discourses of Epictetus (Il.xviii.1-5). 2Ch ristianity and Classical Culture (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 242.
122 123
sorrow for sin is a reasoned judgment which results directly from his
overcoming another temptation offered by Eve. Further, Milton's presen
tation of Adam's regeneration follows Stoic teaching even more closely than his depiction of the repentance. In Book XI he demonstrates how
classical ethics, especially Stoic ethics, under the guidance of God prepared man for divine revelation, and in Book XII he exhibits the effect of revelation on the mind which has been properly prepared by the study of moral philosophy. In order to discover how Milton develops the process of Adam and Eve's repentance and regeneration, we must return to Book X where Christ judges Adam and Eve.
Milton makes one very substantial change in the literary tradition concerning God's judgment of Adam and Eve: Christ, as presented in
Paradise Lost, is "both Judge and Saviour sent," Thus Milton departs from the literary tradition, which pictures God in his role of Adam and
Eve's judge as a harsh and bitter divinity. Dick Taylor points up the difference:
The scene of the Judgment is quiet. The Son is "the mild Judge and intercessor both/To sentence Man," and. his manner although firm is yet gentle and kind. There are no thundering addresses which beat the unhappy pair to the ground, no blasts such as "Slave, obey they [sic] Lord! Come Forth thou Fugitive," or "faithless renegate,/Apostate Pagan." In fact, Milton seems pointedly rejecting such castigation in the statement "To whom the gracious Judge without revile repli'd" (IX, 117-18). Christ's opening address, thus, is undisturbing and uttered with a tone of concern and profound sympathy:
Where art thou Adam, wont with joy to meet My coming seen far off? I miss thee here, Not pleas'd, thus entertain'd with solitude, 124
Where obvious duty erewhile appear'd unsought: Or come I less conspicuous, or what change • Absents thee, or what chance detains? Come forth.3 (X.103-108)
Christ's judgment of Adam and Eve is the judgment of a reasonable
divinity. The words of Du Bartas' God, which Taylor quotes above, are
illustrative of a God who finds Himself carried away by the passion of
anger. Milton's Christ, on the other hand, closely corresponds to the
Stoic conception of the deity:
It should seem, then, that where the essence of God is, there too is the essence of good. - What, then, is the essence of God? Flesh?-- By no means. An estate? Fame?--By no means. Intelligence? Knowledge? Right Reason?--Certainly. Here then, without more ado, seek the essence of good. For, do you seek it in a plant?--No. Or in a brute?-- No.4
Milton's Christ is not interested in revenge but in reasonable Justice
tempered with mercy. Thus, after he judges Adam and Eve, Christ is not
above assuming the form of a servant in order to clothe the nakedness of the sinful couple:
Nor hee thir outward onely with the Skins Of Beasts, but inward nakedness, much more Opprobrious, with his Robe of righteousness, Araying cover'd from his Fathers sight. (X.220-224)
Because of His gentle manner and obvious concern for Adam and Eve,
Christ "lays the ground for the start of the actual redemptive process."5
Later, Adam will remember Christ's "mild and gracious temper," and it
3"Milton's Treatment of the Judgment and the Expulsion in Paradise Lost," TSE, X(1960), 72. 4Epictetus, Moral Discourses, Enchiridion and Fragments , trans. Elizabeth Carter (London: J. M. Dent § Sons, 1957), Discourses, II. viii.l. All subsequent quotations from the works of Epictetus will be cited in the text. 5Taylor, p. 73. 125
will help him to resist Eve's temptation to suicide.
Christ's gentleness as judge is not the only innovation which Milton
brings to the judgment scene. Christ also performs the function of an
oracle in his condemnation of the serpent:
Because thou hast done this, thou art accurst Above all Cattle, each Beast of the Field; Upon thy Belly groveling thou shalt goe, And dust shalt eat all the dayes of thy Life. Between Thee and the Woman I will put Enmitie, and between thine and her Seed; Her Seed shall bruse thy head, thou bruise his heel. (X.175-181)
However, be.cause Adam is so lost in sin and so very much caught up in despair, he fails to understand the meaning of the oracle. It is only as he gradually regains his right reason in Book X that Adam comes to a
"progressive understanding of the curse on the serpent."6
Christ leaves Adam and Eve in a state of perturbation. Adam, noticing the grim changes taking place in nature as a result of his sin, spends a sleepless night lamenting "in a troubl'd Sea of passion tost."
Kester Svendsen notes that this lament is the longest soliloquy in the poem and that it takes the form of a debate between Adam's passionate nature and his reasonable nature. In the debate Adam's reason gradually reemerges from a state of chaos.7 "Adam is on his way back intellectually, though he is still floundering in emotional upheaval."8 Mr. Svendsen's explanation of Adam's soliloquy seems somewhat oversimplified. Adam can hardly be said to be on the way back intellectually in light of the way
“John E. Parish, "Milton and God's Curse on the Serpent," JEGP, LVIII (1959), 241. 7"Adam's Soliloquy in Book X of Paradise Last," College English, X (1949), 366. 8Svendsen, p. 367. 126
he berates Eve when she interrupts his monologue to ask for forgiveness.
On the contrary, Adam's spiritual condition seems to worsen as his lament
continues. The more Adam's reason contends with his passions, the more unreasonable and passionate he becomes. He moves from a state of terror to "double terror," and eventually throws himself on the ground, calling out for death:
Why comes not Death, Said hee, with one thrice acceptable stroke To end me? (X.854-856)
J. B. Broadbent notes correctly, it seems to me, that Milton's use of homoiteieuton throughout Adam's monologue helps convey the impression that the speaker's thoughts are going nowhere but in circles. Adam is trying to reason his way out of misery only to plunge deeper into it.9
It would seem then that Milton's intention in Adam's lament is not to illustrate Adam's regaining his reason but to exemplify that in Adam's new state of sin unaided reason is unable to contend with passion. ■ In any such confrontation even the most reasonable ideas crumble into passionate outbursts. Adam himself recognizes that his reason seems to be powerless in the state of sin:
0 Conscience, into what Abyss of fears And horrors hast thou driv'n me; out of which I find no way, from deep to deeper plung'd! (X.841-844)
However, there is more to Adam's monologue than an illustration of the power of passion over reason. Milton makes it very clear that the bulk of Adam's problem in this instance stems from his self-piity. Adam cannot reason properly because he is maintaining the same destructive
9"Milton's Rhetoric," MP, LVI (1959), 227. 127
attitude toward himself that caused him to eat the apple in the first
place. His self-pity is evident in the two major themes on which the
whole monologue revolves. Adam begins the lament fearing that his
posterity will come to hate him:
0 voice once heard- Delightfully, Enorease and multiply, Now death to heare! for what can I encrease Or multiplie, but curses on my head? Who of all Ages to succeed, but feeling The evil on. him brought by me, will curse My Head, Ill fare our Ancestor impure, For this we may thank Adam; but his thanks Shall be the execration; so besides Mine own that bide upon me, all from mee Shall with a fierce reflux on mee redound, On mee as on thir natural center light Heavie, though in thir place. (X.729-741) f Adam demonstrates no real concern for his posterity., His only worry is
that his sons will come to hate him. Thus he continues to manifest the
same kind of masochistic self-pity which led him to eat the apple so yd that he may die with Eve. Now, as then, his passionate selfishness
leads to a death wish:
That dust I am, and shall to dust returne: 0 welcom hour whenever! why delayes His hand to execute what his Decree Fixd on this day? why do I overlive, , Why am I mockt with death, and length'nd out To deathless pain? how gladly would I meet Mortalitie my sentence, and be Earth Insensible, how glad would lay me down As in my Mothers lap? there I should rest And sleep secure; his dreadful voice no more Would Thunder in my ears, no fear of worse To mee and to my ofspring would torment me With cruel expectation. (X.770-782)
When it becomes apparent that he is not going to die immediately, Adam's fear that his posterity will hate him returns even more dreadfully than 128
before:
Ay me, that fear Comes thundring hack with dreadful revolution On my defensless head; both Death and I Am found Eternal, and incorporate both, Nor I on my part single, in mee all Posteritie stands curst: Fair Patrimonie That I must leave ye, Sons; 0 were I able To waste it all my self, and leave ye none! So disinherited how would ye bless Me now your curse! (X.813-822)
This of course leads Adam into an even stronger desire for death: "Why
comes not Death,/...with one thrice acceptable stroke/To end mee?"
Because Adam's reasoning is circular, his spiritual condition is far
worse when he finishes his monologue than when he began it. His self-
pity has made it impossible for him to reason his way out of anxiety,
and this failure has only served to increase his anxiety.
It is at this point that Eve tries to comfort Adam and is terribly
rebuked by him. Adam is so bereft of his senses that he wonders out loud:
0 why did God, Creator wise, that peopl’d highest Heav'n With Spirits Masculine, create at last This noveltie on Earth, this fair defect Of Nature, and not fill the World at once With Men as Angels without Feminine, Or find some other way to generate Mankind? (X.888-895)
Adam completely forgets that it was he who asked for the creation of Eve so that she could be his companion and could "solace his defects."
Even though Adam turns away from Eve, she does not leave him but begs for his forgiveness in a speech which Summers- contends- is bare of rhetorical device but which is nevertheless extremely dramatic and very 129
moving:10
Forsake me not thus, Adam, witness Heav'n What love sincere, and reverence in my heart I beare thee, and unweeting have offended, Unhappilie deceav'djj/thy suppliant I beg, and clasp thy knees; bereave me not, Whereon I live, thy gentle looks, thy aid, Thy counsel in this uttermost distress, My onely strength and stay: forlorn of thee, Whither shall I betake me, where subsist? While yet we live, scarse one short hour perhaps, Between us two let there be peace, both joyning, As joyn'd in injuries, one enmitie Against a Foe by doom_express assign'd us, That cruel Serpent: (/5n me exercise not Thy hatred for this miserie befall'n, On me alreadie lost, mee then thy self More miserable; both have sin'd, but thou Against God onely, I.against God and thee, And to the place of judgment will return, There with my cries importune Heaven, that all The sentence from thy head remov'd may light On me, sole cause to thee of all this woe, Mee mee onely just object of his ire. (X.914-936. My italics)
Summers notes that this speech is significant because in it "Eve offers
herself as a redeemer, and however inadequate she is to fulfill that
role, her attempt mirrors the redemptive actions of the Son, both in His
first moment of undertaking and throughout the poem."11 As my italics indicate, Eve is no longer thinking of herself. She is concerned with how to save Adam, and she is willing to offer herself as mediatress in order to accomplish this task. Her decision to "importune Heaven" in
Adam's behalf is well meaning but it is also naive, because Eve fails to realize that since she is in the state of sin she is no longer in the position to be a mediatress. WThe Muse's Method. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 176. 11Ibid. , pp. 177-178. For the full effect of these lines, Summers asks us to compare them with Christ's speech: III.236-241. 130
The fact that Eve makes such an ingenious decision is highly ironic,
for hers is the very same decision Adam should have reached when he
discovered Eve in the state of sin. Adam was then in a position to be
Eve's mediator because he was still in the state of grace and was Eve's
lord and guide. Milton underscores this irony with Eve's-inadequate
assessment that Adam has sinned only against God while she has sinned
against God and Adam. The truth is that Adam has. twice abandoned his
duty toward Eve and has thereby sinned as much against her as she has
against him.
Eve's obvious concern for him draws Adam out of his state of self-
pity. He sees through her error in trying to accept all the blame and
comforts her by explaining the situation as it really exists:
If Prayers Could alter high Decrees, I to that place Would speed before thee, and be louder heard, That on my head all might be. visited, Thy frailtie and infirmer Sex forgiv'n, To me committed and by me expos'd. But rise, let us no more contend, nor blame Each other, blam'd enough elsewhere, but strive In offices of Love, how we may light'n Each others burden in our share of woe; Since this days Death denounc't, if ought I see, Will prove no sudden, but a slow-pac't evill, A long days dying to augment our paine, And to our Seed (0 hapless Seed!) deriv'd. (X.952-965)
It should be noted that Adam still fails to realize the importance of
God's prophecy concerning his seed. He still believes that all his posterity will be weak and suffering because of his sin. .
Adam and Eve are now reconciled to each other although they are not yet reconciled to God. Tillyard finds this reconciliation the central episode of the poem: 131
For all the importance of the penitence, it is on the reconciliation that the fullest structural emphasis falls; in it Milton seems to have centered the most intimate significance of his poem. He has in the actual poem, in his manipulation of his poetic material, carefully led everything up to this point.12
Although some critics find this position overstated,13 it does contain
a great deal of truth. Milton has manipulated all of his poetic material,
at least in Book X, so that it does lead up to this particular scene in
which Eve, having been reconciled to Adam, offers him two suggestions;
"Tending to some relief of our extremes" (976). She prefaces these
suggestions with the statement that they are "sharp and sad," but that
they are more tolerable and "of easier choice" than the miseries which
now face them. She first suggests that they avoid begetting "a woful
Race," condemned to live a "wretched Life" which will end in death, by
refusing to have children:
It lies, yet ere Conception to prevent The Race-unblest, to being yet unbegot. Childless thou art, Childless remaine: So Death shall be deceav'd his glut, and with, us two Be forc'd to satisfie his Rav'nous Maw. (X.987-991)
If Adam finds this course too difficult to bear, there is another way to
end their misery:
Let us seek Death, or he not found, supply With our own hands his Office on our selves; Why stand we longer shivering under feares, That shew no end but Death, and have the power, Of many ways to die the shortest choosing, Destruction with destruction to destroy. (X.1001-1006) 1¿Studies in Milton (London; Chatto and Windus, 1951), p. 42. 13See H. V. S. Ogden, "The Crisis of Paradise Lost Reconsidered," PQ, XXXVI C1957), 16. 132
Adam realizes that Eve's proposals are sinful. She is once again
reasoning only from externals. However, these sinful propositions in
their way do provide an answer to the very problems which Adam has
debated throughout.most of the night. He has feared that his progeny will come to hate him. If he has no/ children, this cannot happen. Adam also wishes for death. If he commits suicide, this wish will be fulfilled.
Thus Eve's suggestions constitute another temptation for Adam. Were he to continue in the same state of self-pity and effeminacy of mind which led him to eat of the fruit in the first place, either one of Eve's suggestions would have been most attractive to him. However, Eve's unselfish desire to serve as mediator for Adam has helped him to forget about himself. By her example Eve has promoted good works in her husband.
Therefore Adam is able to regain his self-discipline. His response to
Eve's proposals is thus made in an attempt to ease her suffering rather than in an attempt to join her in suffering:
Eve, thy contempt of life and pleasure seems To argue in thee something more subline And excellent then what thy minde contemnes; But self-destruction therefore saught, refutes That excellence thought in thee, and implies Not thy contempt, but anguish and regret For loss of life and pleasure overlov'd.,/ Or if thou covet death, as utmost end Of miserie, so thinking to evade The penaltie pronounc't, doubt not but God Hath wiselier arm'd his vengeful ire then so To be forestall'd;...Then let us seek Some safer resolution, which methinks I have in view, calling to minde with heed Part of our Sentence, that thy Seed shall bruise The Serpents head; piteous amends, unless Be meant, whom I conjecture, our grand Foe Satan, who in the Serpent have contriv'd Against us this deceit: to crush his head Would be revenge indeed; which will be lost 133
By death brought on our selves, or childless days Resolv'd, as thou proposest;... No more be mention'd then of violence Against our selves, and wilful barrenness, That cuts us off from hope, and savours onely- Rancor and pride, impatience and despite Reluctance against God and his just yoke Laid on our Necks. Remember with what mild And gracious temper he both heard and judg'd Without wrauth or reviling;... How much more, if we pray him, will his ear Be open, and his heart to pitie incline. (X.1013-1061)
In reading Adam's speech one gets the distinct feeling that a
scene similar to this has taken place before. One cannot help noticing,
for example, that Adam opens his speech by praising Eve for what seems
good in her suggestion. This is exactly the way Adam first responds to
Eve's suggestion in Book IX that they divide their morning's labors:
Well hast thou motion'd, well thy thoughts imployd How we might, best fulfill the work which here God hath assign'd us, nor of me shalt pass Unprais'd: for nothing lovelier can be found In Woman, then to studie houshold good, And good workes in her Husband to promote. (IX.229-234) .
In a sense then, Adam and Eve are being given another chance to replay- the scene in which they made the errors which led them into sinThis time there is not the slightest hint of uxoriousness in Adam's response.
He does not plead with Eve; he explains to her. For her part Eve does not interrupt Adam with "argument... false and proud.” Indeed, she makes not a single utterance all the while Adam is speaking, and when he is finished she willingly does exactly as he says:
What better can we do, then to the place Repairing where he judg'd us, prostrate fall Before him reverent, and there confess' Humbly our faults, and pardon beg, with tears 134
Watering the ground, and with our sighs the Air Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign Of sorrow unfeign'd, and humiliation meek.14 (X.1086-1092)
Since Adam is now thinking only of Eve's good and not of what their
love relationship means to him, he maintains his dignity as Eve's lord
and guide. More importantly, however, because Adam is now acting as the
self-disciplined human being God intended him to be, he begins to regain
the right reason which he had lost through effeminacy of mind. Suddenly,
Adam is able to answer for Eve the very questions which tormented him
during the night, the very same questions which he in the state of self- pity was unable to answer. He begins to understand, although not
completely as yet, Christ's prophecy that their seed will one day crush
the head of the serpent. Thus, his sons will not be powerless, woebegone
creatures who will curse him as the author of their existence. Instead,
they somehow will gain revenge for what Satan has done. If he and Eve
commit suicide or fail to have children, this revenge will be frustrated./
Moreover, Adam now remembers "with what mild/And gracious temper [Christ]
i^This is the only passage in the poem where Milton uses the device so common in the Greek epics where the poet repeats word for word an entire passage: So spake our Father penitent, nor Eve Felt less remorse: they forthwith to the place Repairing where he judg'd them prostrate fell Before him reverent, and both confess'd Humbly thir faults, and pardon beg'd, with tears Watering the ground, and with thir sighs the Air Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign Of sorrow unfeign'd, and humiliation meek. (X.1097-1104) The reason for Milton's repetition of this passage, it seems to me, is that he wishes to stress the fact that Adam and Eve are doing exactly what Adam has reasonable decided that they should do. 135
both heard and judg'd/[them] Without wrauth or reviling." Thus Adam
begins to see that God's mercy is linked to his justice. Since this is
the case, God will surely listen to them if they are truly sorry for
their sins. It is not until Adam has thus reasoned his way .to sorrow
that Milton first uses the word "penitent" to describe him (X.1097).
The Adam who "lamented loud through the still night" was not penitent,
but merely self-indulgent. True penitence like true love is the result
of disciplined, reasonable activity, not an emotional state of mind.^/
Adam's repentance as it has been described above demonstrates Stoic
influence in two ways. First and most important, Adam's repentance is
the direct result of his regaining right reason through self-discipline.
Epictetus explains the process involved using as an example the error
of avarice:
When you once desire money, for example, if a degree of reasoning sufficient to produce a sense of the evil be applied, the desire ceases, and the governing faculty of the mind regains its authority: whereas, if you apply no remedy, it returns no more to its former state; but, being again excited by a correspondent appearance, it kindles at the desire more quickly than before, and, by frequent repetitions, at last becomes callous. (Discourses, Il.xviii.2)
Secondly, upon becoming repentant, Adam is finally willing to accept in
a spirit of humility the punishment which God has decreed for him.
"Require not things to happen as you wish," says Epictetus, "but wish them to happen as they do happen" (Enchiridion, . Seneca expresses the same belief even more strongly when he says, "I do not obey God; I 136
agree with him" and "only obedience to God is true liberty,"15 *
However, as a Protestant schooled in the Augustinian tradition,
Milton did not believe it possible for Adam to have regained right.reason
through his own power after committing original sin. Since Adam had perverted his nature by sin, there was no way for him to reason correctly without the help of God's grace. Milton explains this in the opening
lines of Book XI:
Thus they in lowliest plight repentant stood Praying, for from the Mercie-seat above Prevenient Grace descending had remov'd The stonie from thir hearts, § made new flesh Regenerate grow instead, that sighs now breath'd Unutterable, which the Spirit of prayer Inspir'd, and wing'd for Heav'n with speedier flight Then loudest Oratorie. (XI.1-9)
The question which naturally arises in reference to this quotation is whether Adam really reasons his way to repentance if that repentance is actually the result of God's grace. If God is directing Adam's will through grace, then Adam is not morally responsible for his own repent ance. It should be noted in this connection that Milton does not mention
"prevenient grace" until after Adam has repented, even though prevenient grace is by its very nature "antecedent to human action...[It] precedes the determination of the human will."15 Patrides notes that Milton is purposely being imprecise in his treatment of grace and its relationship to Adam and Eve's actions in this particular instance because grace is not "a philosophical tenet to be dissected but an experience to be lived."17
15Quoted by E. Vernon Arnold, Roman Stoicism (London: Routledge and K, 1958), p. 284.. 15The Poems of John Milton, ed. John Carey and Alastair Fowler (London: Longmans, 1968), p. 981. 17Milton and the Christian Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 204. 137
In other words, grace for Milton seems to be one of those essential doctrines which should remain free "from the perplexities of controversy... and we should be fearful of overstepping the bounds of propriety in its investigation" (Christian Doctrine, C.E. XV.265).
It seems to me that there is yet another reason why Milton is so imprecise as to avoid mentioning grace until after Adam and Eve repent.
Throughout Paradise Lost Milton insists on Adam and Eve's complete free will. While discussing Satan's revolt with God the Son, God the Father explains the importance of this doctrine:
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell. Not free, what proof could they have givn sincere Of true allegiance, constant Faith or Love, Where onely what they needs must do, appeard, Not what they would? what praise could they receive? What pleasure I from such obedience paid, Then Will and Reason (Reason also is choice) Useless and vain, of freedom both despoild, Made passive both, had servd necessitie, Not mee. (III.102-111)
Milton is just as explicit on this point in Christian Doctrine where he explains that God deliberately sets limits to his own divine providence in order to assure that man will have free will:
There can be no doubt that for the purpose of vindicating the justice of God,...it is much better to allow man...some portion of free will in respect of good works, or at least of good endeavors...[for] if He [God] inclines the will of man to moral good or evil, according to his own pleasure, and then rewards the good, and punishes the wicked, the course of equity seems to be disturbed;... It would appear, therefore, that God's general government of the universe...should be understood as relating to natural and civil concerns... rather than to matters of morality and religion. (C.E. XV.213-215) 138
Had Milton described prevenient grace descending on Adam before he
reasoned his way to repentance, Adam's conversion would have seemed the
result of necessity, and Adam himself would have become little more than
the passive recipient of grace rather than a human being acting with
complete moral freedom.
As Patrides mentions, one seeks in vain through all of Milton's works for any explicit utterance on the relationship between grace and nature.18 Milton does not presume to understand the exact relationship between God's grace and man's will, but he certainly insists that man can attain merit only if he is acting freely. Thus Patrides says,
"Milton would doubtless have been prepared to endorse Pascal's suitable imprecision in saying that 'grace is in some sense natural."'19 God does not force Adam to repent but through grace restores his right reason sufficiently enough so that Adam can repent. Basil Willey summarizes Milton's position very well when he says, "Milton believed in the Fall, but he also believed in the power and freedom of the human will to stand firm, or to recover itself after a lapse."20
Adam's recovery process does not end, however, as soon as he repents. Repentance has reconciled Adam and Eve to God, but it has not prepared them to live the life of pain and suffering which will be required from them in the postlapsarian state. Thus Milton extends
Adam and Eve's recovery into Books XI and XII where Adam through a series of visions is prepared by the Archangel Michael for the life which lies
^Milton and the Christian Tradition, p. 216. ■192i>fd. 20The Seventeenth Century Background (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), p. 241. 139
ahead of him.
Early in Book XI God sends Michael to dismiss Adam and Eve from the
garden of Paradise. However, since he notices "them softn'd and with
tears/Bewailing thir excess," He urges Michael to
Dismiss them not disconsolate; reveale To Adam what shall come in future dayes, As I shall thee enlighten, intermix My Cov'nant in the womans seed renewd; So send them forth, though sorrowing, yet in peace. (XI.113-118)
It is important to note that God does not tell Michael to dismiss Adam
and Eve in a joyful frame of mind but "sorrowing, yet in peace." Thus,
early in Book XI Milton sets the tone for the new state of mind which
Adam will gradually acquire under the tutelage of Michael. The news of
Christ's redemptive act will bring joy of course, but that joy will be tempered with a sober awareness of man's sin which makes redemption necessary.
The Adam and Eve who wait for Michael in Paradise are repentant, but they are spiritually ill-prepared to learn about Christ's redemption.
Neither Adam nor Eve as yet understand the effect which sin has had on the human condition. Both of them naively believe that somehow things - can return to the state which existed before sin entered the world.
Adam, for example, mistakenly believes that the feeling of peace in his heart which results from contrition is really a sign from God that every thing will return to normal:
The bitterness of death Is past, and we shall live. Whence Haile to thee, Eve rightly call'd, Mother of all Mankind, Mother of all things living, since by thee Man is to live, and all things live for Man. (XI.157-161) 140
Eve, for her part, even dares to hope that they will remain in Paradise.
Thus Michael's first act of instruction is to destroy- Adam and Eve's
illustions:
But longer in this Paradise to dwell Permits not; to remove thee I am come, And send thee from the Garden forth to till The ground whence thou wast tak'n, fitter Soile. (XI.259-263)
Adam's and Eve's naive responses to this demand are yet another indication
of their inability to understand the state of man as it now exists and
their need for further instruction. When she hears Michael's command,
Eve laments,
0 unexpected stroke, worse then of Death! Must I thus leave thee Paradise? thus leave Thee Native Soile, these happie Walks and Shades, Fit haunt of Gods? where I had hope to spend, Quiet though sad, the respit of that day That must be mortal to us both. 0 flours, That never will in other Climate grow, My early visitation, and my last At Eev'n, which I bred up with tender hand From the first op'ning bud, and gave ye Names, Who now shall reare ye to the Sun, or ranke Your Tribes, and water from th' ambrosial Fount? Thee lastly nuptial Bowre, by mee adornd With what to sight or smell was sweet; from thee How shall I part, and whither wander down Into a lower World, to this obscure And wilde, how shall we breath in other Aire Less pure, accustomd to immortal Fruits? (XI.268-285)
J. B. Broadbent contends that this passage is one of the many in
Books XI and XII where Milton "fumbles" the spiritual element in the
latter part of the poem. There is, he contends, no clear distinction made in Eve's speech between the physical and the spiritual.21 Broad-
2tSome Graver Subject: An Essay on Paradise Lost (London: Chatto and Windus, 1960), p. 270. 141
bent is of course correct in his observation that Eve fails to distinguish
between the physical and the spiritual. This-, however, should not be
attributed to Milton's poor rhetoric, as Broadbent attributes it, but to
Milton's very consistent character delineation. Eve throughout the
entire poem has made judgments which are based entirely on sense percep
tion, Thus it is not surprising that she should do so here. This trait,
together with her pride, is what caused her to sin. Now it causes her
to misunderstand the nature of Paradise. Paradise to Eve is not a
spiritual condition but a gigantic flower garden. Summers notes Eve's
inability to see beyond the merely physical when he mentions her misguided
lament over the loss of her nuptial bed. "Eve," he says, "has identified her human love with the place rather than her lover."22 For this reason,
Michael is forced to remind Eve
Thy going is not lonely, with thee goes Thy Husband, him to follow thou art bound; Where he abides, think there thy native soile. (XI.290-293)
Adam's response to Michael's injunction that they leave the garden illustrates that he understands little more than Eve concerning his spiritual condition:
To his great bidding I submit, This most afflicts me, that departing hence, As from his face I shall be hid, deprivd His blessed count'nance; here I could frequent, With worship, place by place where he voutsaf'd Presence Divine, and to my Sons relate; On this Mount he appeerd, under this Tree Stood visible, among these Pines his- voice I heard, here with him at this Fountain talk'd;... In yonder nether World where shall I' seek His bright appearances, or foot step trace? For though I fled him angrie, yet recall'd
¿-¿The Muse's Method, p. 194. 142
To life prolongd and promisd Race, I now Gladly behold though but his utmost skirts Of glory, and farr off his steps adore. (XI.314-334)
In his despondency over having to leave the garden, Adam is once again
falling prey to effeminacy of mind. He reacts to Michael's news
emotionally rather than reasonably, and as a result, he makes the same
kind of faulty judgment based solely on externals which Eve illustrates
in her speech. Adam equates his ability to see God in creation with the physical place where he exercises that power. He completely forgets that he has a mind which is capable of seeing beyond mere sense knowl edge to the spiritual reality which underlies that knowledge. Thus, even after he leaves Paradise, Adam will be able to see God in all of God's creations. Michael therefore finds it necessary to tell Adam what he, were he judging rightly, should already know:
Adam, thou know'st Heav'n his, and all the Earth, Not this Rock onely; his Omnipresence fills - Land, Sea, and Aire, and every kinde that lives, Fomented by his virtual power and warmd: All th' Earth he gave thee to possess and rule, No despicable gift; surmise not then His presence to these narrow bounds confin'd Of Paradise or Eden. (XI.335-342)
In his present condition Adam is not yet ready to begin his life in the world. He clearly needs instruction. Before Michael takes Adam up the mountain to instruct him, he offers a short preview of what Adam is to learn:
Expect to hear, supernal Grace contending With sinfulness- of Men; thereby to learn True patience, and to temper joy with fear And pious sorrow, equally enur'd By moderation either state to beare 143
Prosperous or adverse: so shalt thou lead Safest thy life, and best prepar'd endure Thy mortal passage when it comes. (XI.359-366)
Scholars have noted that Michael's emphasis on patience, endurance, moderation and the equal acceptance of either prosperity or adversity in order to live a safe life is far more Senecan than it is Christian.
Tillyard, for example, thinks that Milton underwent a change of attitude in writing Books XI and XII. "In the last books pessimism has got some how into the texture of the verse causing a less energetic movement.”
Tillyard then goes on to define this pessimism by saying that Milton's active Christianity has
in the last books...been converted into a stoical resistance. Satan aspiring after a new world is Milton, the Renaissance man seeking after experience and truth: Michael is equally Milton, but a different Milton, when he adapts the words of Seneca the Stoic... It is in the last books that Milton most speaks of reason contending with passion and of the necessity of imposing limits on the desire for knowledge. Control has become more important than energy.23
Tillyard is not the only scholar who finds a strong Stoic element in the last two books. In attempting to explain why he finds Books XI and XII
"bleak and barren," Raj an says,
Tired in spirit, Milton cannot sustain them. There is not progression of poetic fervour to support the mechanical deployment of the epic. The emphasis is on the purely negative side of self-government, on stoic resigna tion and indifference to events.24
¿¿Milton (London: Chatto and Windus, 1930), p. 291, '¿'"'Paradise Lost and the Seventeenth Century Reader (London: Chatto and Windus, 1947), p. 92. 144
Although not willing to attribute Milton's Stoicism to fatigue or
pessimism, J. B. Broadbent also finds it an important factor in the last
book of Paradise Lost:
The prevailing ethic of Book XII is stoic. Michael recommends retreat from outward Hell into an inner condition which is not so much the kingdom of heaven within you, or the promised paradise as indifference. His [Michael's] description of the incar nation is feeble as could be; and there is no answering experience of incarnation in Adam.*2 5
Broadbent also sees a close relationship between Milton's Stoicism and the style of Books XI and XII. Milton's style is "more mechanical and theoretical... than ever before." Even feiix culpa is treated less joyfully by Milton than it is by Du Bartas in his presentation of the
Fall. Milton's "lyric impulse is geared down into mechanics."25
The teachings of Michael in the last two books of Paradise Lost do indeed demonstrate a Stoic ethic which is much more obviously presented than it has been at any other time in the poem. It seems unfortunate, however, that some scholars, recognizing this Stoic element in Paradise
Lost for the first time, attempt to account for it by assuming that a change for the worse has occurred in Milton's attitude toward life.
Since Milton has upheld throughout the epic a Christianity which is permeated by the Stoic ethic, it seems inconsistent that a worn out, pessimistic Milton has in Books XI and XII suddenly abandoned his active
Christianity for an effete Stoicism. The answer to why Milton's
Stoicism suddenly becomes so much more apparent in Books XI and XII than
¿OSome Graver Subject, p. 281. 2^Ibid., p. 282. 145
it has been throughout the poem lies, it seems to me, in the structure
of the poem itself, not in a hypothetical change in Milton's spiritual
condition.
F. T. Prince notes that there is a change in the structure of the
last two books of Paradise Lost which corresponds to the change which
has taken place in Adam and Eve:
The feeling that 'all great things are over' coincides with the change in the nature of Adam and Eve, the change from unfallen to fallen man which makes them at last human beings like ourselves. Here for the first time in the poem we have man as we know him, with his divided will, his passions and aspirations and his sense of guilt and discouragement. Here too the poem for the first time begins to deal with the world as we' know it, with our own past (which to Adam is the future).27
As an epic hero Adam is of course more than an historical figure in
Paradise Lost. He is also the prototype of the whole human race. How
ever, as Prince reminds us, this becomes true in a very special sense
in Books XI and XII. The Adam who ascends the mountain to be taught by
Michael is figuratively fallen man. At this point in the poem, he becomes a symbol of mankind being prepared by God for the redemption.
Milton's aim in Books XI and XII is not to present an historical sketch of the biblical events which led up to man's redemption but to demonstrate through Adam's response to certain particularly chosen biblical events how psychologically the good men in the world have responded to God's teaching. Had Milton merely intended to sketch biblical history, he
27"0n the Last Two Books of Paradise Lost," Milton's Epie Poetry, ed. C. A. Patrides (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1967), p. 246. 146
would most certainly have chosen more important biblical events than the
ones he uses. Summers says, for example, that Milton's omissions in his
catalogue of sacred history "are notable and sometimes startling":
There is no mention of Abraham's 'sacri fice' of Isaac, of Jacob's dream, of Joseph's bondage and deliverance, of the birth and preservation of Moses, of the 'murmurings' of the Children of Israel in the wilderness, of Moses' 'lifting up the serpent,' of Rahab, of Gideon,, of Samson, of Daniel--the list could be extended at length.28
The Adam who accompanies Michael to the top of the mountain in
Book XI is, as previously mentioned, not yet intellectually prepared to
live the gospel message. In fact, Adam is not even intellectually ready
to live the life of a good pagan, for he has never encountered the
realities of fallen human existence such as death, disease, war and hate.
Before Adam can learn to serve God, he must first learn how to respond properly to the contingencies of life with which he will be faced. In'
other words he must become humanly perfect before he can become
spiritually perfect. In Book XI then, there is no particular Christian
teaching. Instead, Milton chooses biblical events which will Illustrate
Adam's learning the Stoic virtues of patience, endurance and acceptance.
Milton's intention is to demonstrate that classical ethics, under God's divine providence, was a necessary preparation for the gospel. This same belief was rigorously upheld by the ante-Nicean Church Fathers. In the words of Clement of Alexandria,
Philosophy came into existence, not on its own account, but for the advantages ...... reaped by us from knowledge of things ¿¿The Muse's Method, p. 191. 147
compounded by the mind....And he who brings everything to bear on a right life, procuring examples from the Greeks and barbarians, this man is an experienced searcher after truth, and in reality a man of much counsel....And how necessary it is for him who desires to be a partaker of the power of God, to treat of intellectual subjects of philosophizing!29
Before man can be saved by the gospel, he must first become "an experi
enced searcher after truth." He must, as the Stoics did, come to grips with the human contingencies of death, suffering and spiritual weakness.
Once he achieves a sober understanding of the human condition and is able to look at that condition in a reasonable rather than in an emotional way, then man is ready to respond properly to God's revelation. In
Book XI, therefore, Michael through Stoic teaching puts Adam in the proper frame of mind to receive the gospel.
Each of the first four visions presented to Adam in Book XT are illustrative of the basic themes for Stoic meditation, and as such all are intended to help Adam overcome his effeminacy of mind. The murder of Abel by Cain introduces Adam to the subject of death. The-Stoic
Marcus Aurelius maintains that this subject is the focal point for all meditation. It should be "steadily contemplated, and the fancies we associate with it mentally dissected" until we can see it "as no more than a process of nature."30 Epictetus is even more specific in the
Enchiridion on the importance of meditating on the subject of death:
29Quoted by Amy Violet Hall, "Milton and the City of God," Diss. University of Washington 1940, p. 27. 3027ze Meditations, trans. John Jackson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), 11.12. All subsequent quotations from The Meditations will be cited in the text. 148
Let death and exile, and all other things which appear terrible be daily before your eyes, but chiefly death, and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything. (xxi)
By also presenting Adam with a vision of the lazar house, Michael intensifies Adam's meditation on death by introducing the subjects of ill health and bodily decay. The position Adam first takes up after seeing death and decay is typical of. a man suffering with a womanish, soul. He sees only death and suffering, not their meaning:
But have I now seen Death? Is this the way I must return to native dust? 0 sight Of terrour, foul and ugly to behold, Horrid to think, how horrible to feel! (XI.462-465) *****•***&&******* 0 miserable Mankind, to what fall Degraded, to what wretched state reserv'd! Better end heer unborn. Why is life giv'n To be thus wrested from us? rather why Obtruded on us thus? who if we knew What we receive, would either not accept Life offer'd, or soon beg to lay it down, Glad to be so dismist in peace. (XI.500-507)
The attitude which Adam here exhibits is the very one which Seneca says makes men most miserable:
Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die. (Ep. iv.6)
It is Michael's task to teach Adam how to die. Moreover, it should he noted that Michael carries out this task without offering Adam any
Christian consolation. At this point in Adam's instruction, Michael holds out to him no. promise of an afterlife. Instead, with words 149
reminiscent of Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, he tells Adam how to prepare
for a natural death by living a life of discipline and moderation:
The rule of not too much, by temperance taught In what thou eatst and drinkst, seeking from thence Due nourishment, not gluttonous delight, Till many years over thy head return: So maist thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy Mothers lap, or be with ease Gatherd, not harshly pluckt, for death mature. (XI.531-537)
Note the similarity between these words of Michael's and the consolation on death offered by Marcus Aurelius:
Spend, therefore, these fleeting moments on earth as Nature would have you spend them, and then go to your rest with a good grace, as an olive falls in its season, with a blessing for the earth that bore it and a thanksgiving to the tree that gave it life. (Meditations IV.48)
After Michael goes on to describe the "melancholy damp" of old age (see
Seneca,Ep. lxvii.l), Adam begins to achieve the proper Stoic attitude toward death and disease:
Henceforth I flie not Death, nor would prolong Life much, bent rather how I may be quit Fairest and easiest of this combrous charge, Which I must keep till my appointed day Of rendring up, and patiently attend My dissolution. (XI.547-552)
Michael is not yet satisfied, however. Adam talks of patience but his description of life as a "combrous charge" illustrates an emotional attachment which belies that patience. Thus Michael corrects Adam again:
Nor love thy Life, nor hate; but what thou livst Live well, how long or short permit to Heav'n. (XI.554-555) 150
"The wise man...," says Seneca, "is so trained that he neither loves nor
hates life; he endures a mortal lot, although he knows an ampler lot is
in store for him" (Ep. lxv.18). Then again, Seneca asks, "And what differ
ence does it make how soon you depart from a place which you must depart
from sooner or later? We should strive, not to live long,, but to live rightly" (Ep. xciii.2).
In the next vision Michael shows Adam the marriage feast of Cain's descendants. Upon watching the feasting and the dancing taking place during the. marriage rites, Adam once again demonstrates his effeminacy of mind. He judges what he sees before him emotionally rather than reasonably:
True opener of mine eyes, prime Angel blest, Much better seems this Vision, and more hope- Of peaceful dayes portends, then those two past; Those were of hate and death, or pain much, worse, Here Nature seems fulfilld in all her ends. (XI.598-603)
Still in his role as Senecan instructor, Michael tells Adam how he has misjudged:
Judg not what is best By pleasure, though to Nature seeming meet, Created, as thou art, to nobler end Holie and pure, conformities divine. (XI.603-606)
On the same subject Seneca notes, "Those who rate pleasure as the supreme ideal hold that the Good is a matter of the senses; but we Stoics maintain that it is a matter of the understanding, and we assign it to the mind" (Ep. cxxiv.2). When one judges according to pleasure, he is of course making emotional judgments rather than reasonable ones.
Seneca feels that this trait is the greatest stumbling block on the 151
path to becoming a wise man. "For this reason," says Seneca, "it is
our duty...to treat carefully the diseased mind and free it from faults"
(Ep. xciv.14). Michael's continuous corrections of Adam's faulty judg
ments are made in the hope of freeing Adam’s mind from this fault which
is figuratively robbing him of his manhood. However, Adam has so
weakened himself by sin that now he finds it very difficult to make any
reasonable judgments at all. Thus, even after Michael corrects Adam's
emotional thinking on the wedding ceremony he has just witnessed, Adam
takes another look at the same scene and judges it emotionally once
again:
But still I see the tenor of Mans woe Holds on the same, from Woman to begin. (XI.632-633)
In this instance Adam lets his personal feelings about women dictate his
response to the scene before him. He has now merited a severe correction from the archangel:
From Mans effeminate slackness it begins, Said th' Angel, who should better hold his place By wisdome, and superiour gifts receav'd. (XI.634-636)
Michael's words remind Adam not only of his failure to judge correctly in this instance, but also of the failure which caused Adam to sin in the first place. Adam first sinned through effeminacy of mind, and now his effeminacy of mind continues to prevent him from learning to judge reasonably. Adam obviously needs more instruction.
Michael continues to put before Adam visions which tempt him into making emotional responses rather than reasonable ones. Finally, after seeing the ravages of war and the destruction of all mankind except Noah 152
by the flood, Adam makes a statement which indicates that he is no
longer emotionally overcome by the mere sight of destruction but that he
is intellectually able to see beyond destruction to what is really impor tant :
0 thou who future things canst represent- As present, Heav'nly instructor, I revive At this last sight, assur'd that Man shall live With all the Creatures, and thir seed preserve. Farr less I now lament for one whole World Of wicked Sons destroyd, then I rejoyce For one Man found so perfet and so just, That God voutsafes to raise another World From him, and all his anger to forget. (XI.870-878)
Adam has learned nothing explicitly Christian in Book XI, but he has learned that "despite murder and war and corruption, man and nature will survive; God will not destroy man and he will not allow mankind to destroy itself."31 Besides gaining this knowledge, Adam has more importantly reached an intellectual state which Prince describes as
"sober concentration."32 He has abandoned the light and emotional thinking of those untutored in the ways of philosophy. He is now ready to be instructed in the Christian way of life.
As Book XII opens, Michael makes it very clear that Adam is leaving the level of human philosophy for the level of divine revelation;
Thus thou hast seen one World begin and end; And Man as from a second stock proceed. Much thou hast yet to see, but I perceave Thy mortal sight to faile; objects divine Must needs impaire and wearie human sense: Henceforth what is to com I will relate. Thou therefore give due audience, and attend. (XII.5-12. My italics)
31Summers, p. 207. 32"0n the Last Two Books- of Paradise Lost," p. 246. 153
"Mortal sight" or philosophy can carry man only part of the way in his
search for God. When this sj ght begins to fail, God’s revelation must
replace human speculation. Therefore Michael no longer presents visions
to Adam, inviting him to lean by reasoning about what he sees before,
him. Rather, Michael reveals God's word directly to Adam telling him
that now he must give "due aucLence." God's revelation, however, is both
direct and indirect. As Micha il tells Adam, God chooses to speak to man,
by types And shadows, of ’ hat destined Seed to bruise The Serpent, by i hat means he shall achieve Mankinds deliver: nee. (XII.232-235)
Adam, of course, represents all mankind, so Michael speaks to him by the same "types and shadows." Mich'.el tells Adam the stories of Moses and
Abraham who in their roles of m diator for and father of the Jewish people prefigure the redemptive role of Christ. Upon hearing the stories,
Adam feels as if a weight has been lifted from his heart. His attitude becomes one of restrained joy:
Here Adam inter ,os’d. 0 sent from Heav'n Enlightner of my d .rkness, gracious things Thou hast reveald, those chiefly which concerne Just Abraham and h: s Seed: now first I finde Mine eyes true op'i ing, and my heart much eas'd, Erwhile perplext with thoughts what would becom Of mee and all Mani ¡.nd; but now I see His day, in whom al I Nations shall be blest, Favour unmerited by me, who sought Forbidd'n knowledge by forbidd'n means. (XII.270-279)
Still, Adam is not completely sat: sfied. He continues to question
Michael until the angel reveals- to him the part his seed, Christ, will play in his and all the world's redemption. Once Adam learns the complete truth, he is overcome by joy: 154
0 goodness infinite, goodness immense! That all this good of evil shall produce, And evil turn to good; more wonderful Then that which by creation first brought forth Light out of darkness! full of doubt I stand, Whether I should repent me now of sin By mee done and occasiond, or rejoyce Much more, that much more good thereof shall spring, To God, more glory, more good will to Men From God, and over wrauth grace shall abound. (XII.469-478)
Adam now understands all that revelation can teach him. lie is ready to make an act of faith and has become, as Patrides notes, the world's first Christian:33
Henceforth I learne, that to obey is best? And love with fear the onely God, to walk As in his presence, ever to observe His providence, and on him sole depend, Mercifull over all his works, with good Still overcoming evil, and by small Accomplishing great things, by things deemd weak. Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise By simply meek; that suffering for Truths sake Is fortitude to highest victorie, And to the faithful Death the Gate of Life; Taught this by his example whom I now Acknowledge my Redeemer ever blest. (XII.561-573)
As the quotation indicates, however, Adam has not forgotten the Stoic philosophy he learned in Book XI. Thus he is now able to make an intellectual rather than an emotional commitment to God. Adam's speech contains no effusion of mawkish sentimentality. His conversion is not a passionate experience the intensity of which clouds over the fact that he must still live a human life in a fallen world. Philosophy has taught Adam that there is no escape from the struggle to overcome evil, and that this must be done on a day-to-day basis, not by accomplishing
3^Milton and the Christian Tradition, p. 128. 155
heroic deeds but by doing well "things deemd weak." The path to perfec
tion is a ripening process as described by Epictetus, the Stoic;
No great thing is brought to perfection suddenly, when not so much as a bunch of grapes or a fig is. If you tell me that you would at this minute have a fig, I will answer you, that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen. Is then the fruit of a fig-tree not brought to perfection suddenly, and in one hour; and would you possess the fruit of the human mind in so short a time, and without trouble? I tell you, expect no such thing. (Discourses I.xiv.2)
God has not called Adam to a life of glory but to a life of struggle. At
last Michael can announce to Adam that he has "attaind the summe/Of
wisdome" (575-576). Armed with a realistic Christian faith Adam is
finally prepared to leave Paradise to live the life of trial and endur
ance which Christian perfection demands.
It would seem that Tillyard, Raj an and Broadbent are correct in
their assessment when they maintain that Books XI and XII of Paradise
Lost are Stoic. However, they are incorrect when they assume that there is Stoic influence only in the last two books. As I have tried to demonstrate in this dissertation, Milton's entire conception of the Fall was influence by Stoicism. For example, Milton's depiction of Adam and Eve in the state of prelapsarian perfection shows Stoic influence because Milton adopts Stoic rational psychology to explain the reasoning processes of his innocent couple. Thus all of Eve's judgments are based entirely on sense perception, while Adam possesses the ability to see beyond sense knowledge to God's law operative in the universe. Moreover,
Milton's Stoicism is evident in his- interpretation of the Augustinian 1S6
concept that Adam and Eve were predisposed to sin before they actually
sinned. Where Augustine emphasizes Adam and Eve's pride/ Milton emphasizes
their false judgments resulting from the inability to discipline them
selves. Milton's delineation of the Fall itself also shows Stoic
influence. Although Eve is to some extent proud, the main reason for her
fall is her inability to judge.on any other level but the sensual. Adam,
on the other hand, falls through "effeminacy of mind" described in detail
by Seneca in De dementia. Finally, as Tillyard, Rajan and Broadbent
have noticed, Milton's analysis of Adam and Eve's regeneration is also
Stoic.
The fact that there is Stoic influence throughout the whole of
Paradise Lost negates the theory that Milton embraced Stoicism in Books
XI and XII only because of pessimism and fatigue. As Prince so percep
tively notes, Milton in the last two books is no longer dealing with prelapsarian man but with fallen man.34 Christ's redemption does not make fallen man perfect, nor does it in any way negate the life of struggle and suffering which man must live in order to achieve some measure of perfection on this earth and eternal happiness in heaven.
To assume that Christ redeemed man to a life of joy is not only not pes- simism} ■ it is also faulty idealism. In a way, such an assumption is an example of effeminacy of mind, for it is an emotional judgment which completely ignores reality. Thus Milton deliberately avoids the lyric tone which Broadbent finds missing in the last two books of Paradise
Lost. Milton's presentation of felix eulpa is less lyric than Du Bartas's presentation because Milton wants to demonstrate that through conversion 34"On the Last Two Books of Paradise Lost," p. 246. 157
Adam has come to a reasonable understanding of the difficult life ahead
and that even though he sees the difficulties he is nevertheless willing
to accept them as part of God's divine plan and work for salvation. This
idea is, of course, basically Stoic, but it is not pessimistic. The
contention of Raj an and Tillyard that it is pessimistic puts them in the
corner of Bentley who, finding too little comfort in the last books of
Paradise Lost, changed Milton's last lines to read:
Then hand in hand, with social steps their way Through Eden took with heav’nly comfort cheared.35
Heavenly comfort does not "cheer." It prepares man to accept willingly the life which Providence has designed for him, and thereby to live that life as perfectly as possible. Thus, Adam and Eve leave Paradise
"sorrowing, yet in peace":
Som natural tears they drop'd, but wip'd them soon; The World was all before them, where to choose Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide: They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow, Through Eden took thir solitarie way. (XI.645-649)
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