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Appendix 1 Hermetic Philosophy Appendix 1 Hermetic Philosophy Hermetic philosophy goes back to earliest times and was known to the ancient Egyptians and the Hebrews. By the mid seven­ teenth century it was complex and incorporated many Eliz­ abethan ideas, such as the 'chain of being' and the relation of man to the universe as 'microcosm' and 'macrocosm'. It stressed the unity of the cosmos and the interdependence of all its parts. Hermeticism was linked to Christian doctrine by positing the divine essence inherent in all Creation. The divine part of man is his soul, but other living creatures are also endowed with a divine spark that keeps them in harmony or sympathy with God. Nor is this touch of the divine essence confined to animate beings. All things strive to be at one with God. This belief lies behind such lines by Vaughan as the following Waters that fall Chide, and fly up; Mists of corruptest fome Quit their first beds & mount; trees, herbs, flowres, all Strive upwards stil; ('The Tempest', 11.25-8) and: So hills and valleys into singing break, And though poor stones have neither speech nor tongue, While active winds and streams both run and speak, Yet stones are deep in admiration. ('The Bird' 11.13-16) 172 HERMETIC PffiLOSOPHY 173 Vaughan practised medicine on hermetic principles and trans­ lated a treatise on the subject written by Henry Nollius and first published in 1613: Hermetical Physick: or, The right way to preserve, and to restore Health. Vaughan's translation was pub­ lished in 1655, the same year as the second part of Silex Scintillans. Hermetic medicine was based on a knowledge of correspondences or 'sympathetic' ties between different species. Diseases were cured by those substances, particularly herbs and plants, that had properties akin to the ailment. This follows the teaching of Paracelsus rather than the Galen tradition of the 'humours', on which most Elizabethan medical practice was based. Galen advocated applying the opposite humour to that which was believed to have caused the illness. This was supposed to correct the physical imbalance brought about by excess of one humour. There are references to Galen as well as Paracelsus in Donne. Herbert alludes to the Paracelsian tradition in his poem 'Man': Herbs gladly cure our flesh; because that they Finde their acquaintance there. (11.23-4) Correspondences between various planes of being were part of the Elizabethan world view. The notion embraces the Elizabethan belief of man as the microcosm which parallels the macrocosm of the universe. Donne refers to it in one of the Holy Sonnets: I am a little world made cunningly Of elements, and an angel sprite. (11.1-2) It is essentially this belief that Herbert utilizes in 'Man', in which he says man 'is in little all the sphere' (1.22). As the quotation above demonstrates Herbert linked it more closely to hermetic philosophy than Donne. He expresses fully, albeit unconsciously, the relation between the Elizabethan and hermetic views: Man is all symmetrie, Full of proportions, one limbe to another, And all to all the world besides: Each part may call the furthest, brother: For head with foot hath private amitie, And both with moons and tides. (11.13--18) 174 THE LANGUAGE OF THE METAPHYSICAL POETS The 'symmetrie' and correspondence to which Herbert draws attention lie at the heart of the metaphysical conceits and ideas that characterize not only Vaughan's poetry but that of the group of poets examined in this book. Another hermetic belief was that things change, merging into one another and re-emerging in different forms. All matter is thus in a state of flux. Here again is Herbert: As a young exhalation, newly waking, Scorns his first bed of dirt, and means the sky; But cooling by the way, grows pursie and slow, And setling to a cloud, doth live and die In that dark state of tears ... ('The Answer', 11.8-12) The heat of the sun draws vapour upward from the earth, which, cooling in the upper atmosphere, falls again as rain. This is one of the cyclical patterns in nature. Another example of flux comes in 'The Book', a poem at the end of the Second Part of Vaughan's Silex Scintillans. The leaves of the book are followed through the stages of grass and linen, to paper; and the cover from the animal in the field to the leather binding. A parallel perpetuum mobile is apparent in man's restlessness, to which the poems repeatedly refer. Various aspects of the doctrines of hermeticism are contained in Donne's First Anniversarie, in which Donne refers to them in the context of the world of the 'Egyptian Mages': What Artist now dares boast that he can bring Heaven hither, or constellate any thing, So as the influence of those starres may bee Imprisond in an Herbe, or Charme, or Tree, And doe by touch, all which those starres could do? The art is lost, and correspondence too. For heaven gives little, and the earth takes lesse, And man least knowes their trade, and purposes. If this commerce twixt heaven and earth were not Embarr'd, and all this trafique quite forgot, Shee, for whose losse we have lamented thus, Would worke more fully'and pow'rfully on us. HERMETIC PHILOSOPHY 175 Since herbes, and roots by dying, lose not all, But they, yea Ashes too, are medicinall Death could not quench her vertue so, but that It would be (if not follow'd) wondred at. (11.391-406) The one legacy of hermetic philosophy still in daily use is the common phrase 'hermetically sealed'. It derives from the notion of a unity binding the cosmos together and would have par­ ticularly appealed to Vaughan, and also to Traherne. Appendix 2 The Cambridge Platonists Whereas hermetic philosophy seems to have had some influence on most of the metaphysical poets, the platonism associated with the Cambridge Platonists affected Traherne only. It was in part one of the answers to the materialism of Hobbes, whose Leviathan was not published until 1651. The Cambridge Plato­ nists were a group of Cambridge scholars who, besides rejecting Hobbes, eschewed dogmatism in general. Joseph Glanvill (1636- 80) who, although like Traherne an Oxford man, is associated with the group and also with the Royal Society, called his first and still best-known work The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661). Following the lead of Benjamin Whichcote (1606-83), the Cambridge Platonists began to question the authority of tradi­ tional theology which had been handed down from the medieval Church Fathers and, above all, from Aquinas. Where they felt it was too rigid they believed it ought to be set aside. It had caused bloodshed and Civil War. If any lasting stability was to be attained, dogma should be abandoned. The scientific enquiry of the time led them to discard more and more beliefs that could not be scientifically upheld. They adapted the rational approach of Descartes (1596-1650) to spiritual matters. Their chief tenet was that man was endowed with reason by God and that this reason ('the candle of the Lord') would enable him to recognize the existence of his Creator and incline him to virtue. They main­ tained that everyone should be free to worship after his own manner and that the traditional forms of worship were not sacrosanct. Traherne, being an Oxford man, was not strictly one of the group although, after he joined the household of Sir Orlando 176 THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS 177 Bridgeman, he would almost certainly have come in contact with some of the members, even if he had not already started to think along the same lines. In several respects he differs from the Cambridge group. Although a scholar and an intellectual, he never became overwhelmed with detail as some of the Cambridge men tended to be. Not spending his life in the seclusion of a university college, Traherne was able to practise his beliefs in the ordinary workaday world. This he did with whole-hearted zest. He did not dwell on death, evil and the inevitable wickedness of the flesh but rather exulted in man's corporeal state and the material substance of the natural world in which he is placed. These were the means through which man could come to knowledge of God. He believed completely in a God manifest and immanent in His creation. He also believed that if a man actively pursued joy or 'felicity', he would reach a spiritual condition in which he would see everything anew with the vision of God himself. Such beliefs shine through his poems and poetic prose. Notes Where full bibliographical details of a book are not included in the notes they will be found in the bibliography. Chapter 1 1. See Hutchinson, Henry Vaughan, pp.156--64. 2. See Peterson, The English Lyric from Wyatt to Donne, p.1l8. 3. See Peterson, pp.166-7 and p.353. 4. Martines, Society and History in English Renaissance Verse says: 'The current of "plain and vigorous and sometimes violent diction" to be found in Donne ... is often closely associated with the life and temper of the Inns in the 1590s and early years of the seventeenth century', p.26 & passim. 5. 'A shepheard's tale' is an unfinished poem, written at the same time as Astrophil and Stella, 1581-3. It was inserted into the 1593 ed. of Arcadia by Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. It is usually omitted from modern edns. It has more to do with Elizabethan pastoral than Arcadia, which is a courtly romance. 6. Wires was a term of praise in Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry.
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