Opening the text

Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 2Hallam, Henry

History

Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 2

Name: Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 2
Author: Hallam, Henry

Hallam, Henry

Literature, Modern -- History and criticism

19. It may appear not here required to dwell on a subject scarcely
falling under any province of literary history, but two writers within
this period have been sufficiently distinguished to deserve mention.
One of these was Robert Fludd, an English physician, who died in 1637;
a man of indefatigable diligence in collecting the dreams and follies
of past ages, blending them in a portentous combination with new
fancies of his own. The Rabbinical and Cabbalistic authors, as well as
the Paracelsists, the writers on magic, and whatever was most worthy
to be rejected and forgotten, form the basis of his creed. Among his
numerous works the most known was his “Mosaic Philosophy,” in which,
like many before his time as well as since, he endeavoured to build a
scheme of physical philosophy on the first chapters in Genesis. I do
not know whether he found there his two grand principles or forces of
nature: a northern force of condensation, and a southern force of
dilatation. These seem to be the Parmenidean cold and heat, expressed
in a jargon affected in order to make dupes. In peopling the universe
with dæmons, and in ascribing all phænomena to their invisible agency,
he pursued the steps of Agrippa and Paracelsus, or rather of the whole
school of fanatics and impostors called magical. He took also from
older writers the doctrine of a constant analogy between universal
nature, or the macrocosm, and that of man, or the microcosm; so that
what was known in one might lead us to what was unknown in the
other.[167] Fludd possessed, however, some acquaintance with science,
especially in chemistry and mechanics; and his rhapsodies were so far
from being universally contemned in his own age, that Gassendi thought
it not unworthy of him to enter into a prolix confutation of the
Fluddian philosophy.[168]

     [167] This was a favourite doctrine of Paracelsus. Campanella was
     much too fanciful not to embrace it. Mundus, he says, habet
     spiritum qui est cœlum, crassum corpus quod est terra, sanguinem
     qui est mare. Homo igitur compendium epilogusque mundi est. De
     Sensu Rerum, l. ii. c. 32.

     [168] Brucker, iv. 691. Buhle, iii. 157.

|Jacob Behmen.|

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 2Hallam, Henry

History

Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 2

Hallam, Henry

Literature, Modern -- History and criticism

19. It may appear not here required to dwell on a subject scarcely
falling under any province of literary history, but two writers within
this period have been sufficiently distinguished to deserve mention.
One of these was Robert Fludd, an English physician, who died in 1637;
a man of indefatigable diligence in collecting the dreams and follies
of past ages, blending them in a portentous combination with new
fancies of his own. The Rabbinical and Cabbalistic authors, as well as
the Paracelsists, the writers on magic, and whatever was most worthy
to be rejected and forgotten, form the basis of his creed. Among his
numerous works the most known was his “Mosaic Philosophy,” in which,
like many before his time as well as since, he endeavoured to build a
scheme of physical philosophy on the first chapters in Genesis. I do
not know whether he found there his two grand principles or forces of
nature: a northern force of condensation, and a southern force of
dilatation. These seem to be the Parmenidean cold and heat, expressed
in a jargon affected in order to make dupes. In peopling the universe
with dæmons, and in ascribing all phænomena to their invisible agency,
he pursued the steps of Agrippa and Paracelsus, or rather of the whole
school of fanatics and impostors called magical. He took also from
older writers the doctrine of a constant analogy between universal
nature, or the macrocosm, and that of man, or the microcosm; so that
what was known in one might lead us to what was unknown in the
other.[167] Fludd possessed, however, some acquaintance with science,
especially in chemistry and mechanics; and his rhapsodies were so far
from being universally contemned in his own age, that Gassendi thought
it not unworthy of him to enter into a prolix confutation of the
Fluddian philosophy.[168]

     [167] This was a favourite doctrine of Paracelsus. Campanella was
     much too fanciful not to embrace it. Mundus, he says, habet
     spiritum qui est cœlum, crassum corpus quod est terra, sanguinem
     qui est mare. Homo igitur compendium epilogusque mundi est. De
     Sensu Rerum, l. ii. c. 32.

     [168] Brucker, iv. 691. Buhle, iii. 157.

|Jacob Behmen.|

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 2

Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 2

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