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written permission from the JHU Press. Milton's materialism has recently found broader critical currency, especially since the success of Stephen Fallon's Milton among the Philosophers. Fallon's work has done much to shape a new consensus regarding how Milton's position engages seventeenth-century debates over materialism and determinism, especially as they were formulated by the Cambridge Platonists and Thomas Hobbes (Fallon 97; cf. Rogers 11). Distinguishing Milton's monism from both the mechanist materialism of Hobbes and the dualism of the Cambridge Platonists, Fallon insists that Milton viewed "life" (physical and mental) as neither "the sum of mechanical motions," nor the function of an "incorporeal substance," but as the operation of "corporeal spirits" (117). The concept of "corporeal spirit" is a function of Fallon's equation of "matter" with "body," in that he construes Milton's notion of "first matter" as necessarily sensible. Ultimately, because Fallon argues that Milton's position is closer to the materialism of Thomas Hobbes than to the alleged dualism of Henry More (127-28), he invites the elision of differences between Milton's position and later secular versions of materialism. 1 Such a consequence may not be Fallon's intention but follows directly from treating "matter" (materia) and "body" (corpus) as synonymous.
Recently, in the pages of this journal, D. Bentley Hart has offered a more nuanced account of Milton's materialism, which begins with a greater awareness of the wide range of uses to which the term materia prima may be put (16). Hart aptly points out that none of the available monist precedents (whether stoic or neoplatonic) really fits with Milton's account. In addition, Hart observes that although Milton never "attributes corporeity to God," God "is not finally 'wholly other' than matter" (21). Although there is an implicit difference at this one point in Hart's argument between corpus and materia, that difference is never made explicit, and elsewhere in the essay Hart uses "corporeity" interchangeably with "material" (22). Hart's objectives are quite different from Fallon's, but both accounts create difficulty for themselves by generally equating "matter" with "body." Despite Hart's claim that "the full scope of Milton's heterodoxy has rarely been appreciated" (16), Milton's position is still more resistant to the usual critical categories than even Hart allows.
Because Fallon's work has had broader influence, the present analysis will attend specifically to his interpretation in order to demonstrate that an accurate account of Milton's position must allow for the distinction between "first matter" and "body" (sensible reality). By looking specifically at how Fallon interprets key passages from De Doctrina Christiana 2 and Paradise Lost to support his view of Milton's materialism, we can see that the failure to distinguish between "first matter" and corporeal matter has far-reaching implications for the reading of Milton's prose and poetry: it introduces conceptual incoherences not present in Milton's texts and obscures the genuine subtlety of Milton's poetic presentation of materialism.
In order to support his account of the unusual character of Milton's materialism (which he then seeks also to discern in Paradise Lost), Fallon cites the following passage from Milton's De Doctrina:
The idea that the spirit of man is separate from his body, so that it may exist somewhere in isolation, complete and intelligent, is nowhere to be found in scripture, and is plainly at odds with nature and reason. (CPW 6: 319)
Fallon uses this passage to argue that although Milton distinguishes between body and soul, Milton never admits "the incorporality of the soul nor the separability of body and soul" (100). But this is to connect two points that have no necessary relation. Milton clearly does maintain that a human being consists of a rational sentient body whose "soul" is simply the form of that body, but to link that claim with the "corporeality of the soul" is Fallon's own work. Milton (as we shall later see) does maintain that, in a qualified sense, all forms consist of "matter," but that does not necessitate that forms are corporeal (sensible) unless the equation between matter and body is already (incorrectly) assumed. Milton's denial of the distinction between body (corpus) and soul (animus) in human beings is based on his insistence that both terms name the same human "form" "produced by the power of matter" (ex potentia materiae; cf. CPW 6: 317-18, 322); he never says ex potentia corpus.
Milton's distinction between matter and body needs to be maintained in order to preserve the coherence of his broader position. Elsewhere, for example, Fallon suggests that Milton shares with Thomas Hobbes a belief in the "corporality" of spirit (127). But Milton [End Page 79] would distinguish between "sensible" (corporeal) and "extended," insisting that "spirit" entails the latter but not necessarily the former. Moreover, by mistakenly projecting Milton's denial of the distinction between human body and soul onto the entire created universe, Fallon makes Milton's usage seem contradictory at best, or even disingenuous. Milton is made to deny the difference between corporeal and non-corporeal substances at the same time that he employs that very distinction in talking about non-human nature (q.v. PL 5.414 or 4.584-85).
This misreading of Milton's text revealingly appears in Fallon's emendation of a citation from De Doctrina. The original passage reads as follows:
But, you will say, body cannot emanate from spirit. My reply is, much less can it emanate from nothing. Moreover, spirit being the more excellent substance, virtually, as they say, and eminently contains within itself the inferior substance; in the same way as the spiritual and rational faculty contains the corporeal, that is the sentient and vegetative faculty.
(CPW 6: 309 emphasis added)
Here the pairing of "body" and "spirit" in the first sentence implies that the "inferior substance" of the third sentence is "body." Without this context, however, the third sentence is open to misconstruction:
Spirit, being the more excellent substance, virtually, as they say, and eminently contains within itself the inferior substance [matter]; in the same way as the spiritual and rational faculty contains the corporeal, that is the sentient and vegetative faculty.
(CPW 6: 309 as qtd. in Fallon 102)
Fallon inserts the word "[matter]" just where the context dictates that the "inferior substance" under discussion is "body." The parallel structure of this third sentence is arranged to make a comparison between "faculty" and "substance." Milton argues that just as spiritual faculties include corporeal faculties--the suffix indicating the distinct status of faculty rather than substance--so also spirit (as substance) includes body (as the "inferior substance"). 3
This substitution of "matter" for "body" introduces a troubling incoherence: the original passage is consonant with Milton's monism in a way that Fallon's rendering of it does not allow. Milton's ability to use the distinction between corporeal and incorporeal substance in this passage depends upon his view that both are ultimately differentiated (through form) out of matter (CPW 8: 232-33). In discussing the human soul, he states further that "all form--and the human soul is a kind of form--is produced by the power of matter [ex potentia materia]" (CPW 6: 322, cf. 325). This is not to say that matter per se has any power, because matter is "only a passive principle" (6: 307); rather, forms are produced "as a result of that power which God had implanted in matter" (6: 325). Because of the insepa-rability of matter and form (since they compose an "essence" that is not divisible except by an abstraction), all forms necessarily consist of matter (6: 308): hence the name "first matter." Therefore, individual beings, whether corporeal (bodily) or spiritual (insensible), are differentiated out of the potential of matter, according to their respective material forms determined by God.
The main passage in De Doctrina that might lead some readers to equate matter and body within Milton's writing is in Book 1.7, where he begins his argument for the ex Deo status of first matter and then describes the production of corporeal substance out of spiritual substance (CPW 6: 305-11). Here the progression of the passage is crucial. In the first stage, Milton argues that "matter" comes from God and must therefore be incorruptible (6: 309). He then argues that a "corporeal substance" can be derived from a "spiritual substance" (6: 309). The confusion arises from mistakenly transposing the terms of the latter passage onto the former one (or vice versa) instead of recognizing them as distinct steps in the argument. The mistaken transposition leads to the conclusion that the "spiritual substance" in the latter passage corresponds to "God" in the first one, while "corporeal substance" corresponds to "matter." Milton is, however, quite precise in his usage; only in reference to original creation does he use materia, while only in the latter discussion of substances does he use corpus (Works 15: 18-27). In the very act of arguing that matter per se is "incorruptible," Milton distinguishes it from body, which is necessarily corruptible. Thus, he can then separate the goodness of matter from the origin of evil by pointing out that "it is not the matter nor the form [of a given being] that sins" (CPW 6: 309). The corruptibility that is a function of entering a "mutable state" requires individuation in which matter and form are inseparable (6: 309). The mutability of all individuated beings then accounts for corruptibility by distinguishing existents from the incorruptible matter that emanates from God.
Given Milton's ex Deo account of creation, the matter-body distinction is therefore pivotal in maintaining that God (the immediate source of matter) is not the [End Page 80] cause of evil. Once a given human being is differentiated out of matter (given a form)--that is, made to exist--that person is both corporeal and free to sin, but both of those aspects of mutability result from individuation, not from the incorruptible first matter. 4 The shift from the terms "God" and "matter" to "spiritual substance" and "corporeal substance" in Chapter 7 thus does not indi-cate a respective correspondence. Instead, Milton has actually begun to use "spiritual substance" or "God's own substance" (not "essence" [q.v. Hunter, "Further Definitions" 19-20]) to indicate the incorruptible materia prima, as distinct from corpus.
The character of the matter-body distinction in De Doctrina also raises questions about how we discern monism in Paradise Lost. On this point, an oft-cited passage in the epic is Raphael's materialist account of creation in Book 5, which Fallon too has emphasised. Here the poet's description of the creative process fits the precise use of terms found in his logical and theological prose works:
O Adam, one Almighty is, from whom
All things proceed, and up to him return,
If not deprav'd from good, created all
Such to perfection, one first matter all,
Indu'd with various forms, various degrees
Of substance, and in things that live, of life;
But more refin'd, more spiritous, and pure,
As nearer to him plac't or nearer tending
Each in thir several active Spheres assign'd,
Till body up to spirit work, in bounds
Proportion'd to each kind.
(469-79)
Fallon observes, concerning this passage, that "even the most pure and spiritous substance remains corporeal" (103), but this is to obscure once again the matter-body distinction upon which the creation account depends. Within the terms of the passage itself and the lines preceding it, "corporeal" and "incorporeal" (407-14) are both "degrees / Of substance" (408; 474), which are formed out of the "one first matter." The account ensures that a given being is not reducible to prime matter because that existent is only consequent upon matter being "indu'd" with form. However, because both corporeal (sensible) and incorporeal substances are formed out of matter, the one first matter is apparently extended even though it is not necessarily sensible (cf. More 1: 57-60). The hope that Adam's substance could change from body to spirit is coherent only in a context where the difference between them is strictly maintained within a material continuum. Thus from Milton's assumption that all "matter" is extended it is a mistake to deduce that he equates materiality with corporeality.
To discern the matter-body distinction within Paradise Lost raises a broader set of questions about the generic distinctions between it and De Doctrina. Scholars have often combined passages from De Doctrina with others from Paradise Lost without sufficiently allowing for the major generic differences between the two works, and Fallon follows this practice. 5 His primary concern is with the degree to which the philosophy that informs Paradise Lost engages seventeenth-century debates over dualism and mechanism; his interpretation, however, in its emphasis upon the philosophy of the epic, has scanted the poetry in a way that leads to a misreading of the philosophy as well. The relation between the two works is not one of direct correspondence, and to suppose an explicit and necessary connection between them risks missing the biblicist subtlety of Milton's poetic theodicy. Central to that subtlety is the way Milton presents his monism within the poem so that a dualist orthodox reading of the epic is still possible.
In explaining to Adam what humans should properly deduce from the motion of the celestial spheres, Raphael comments:
And for the Heav'n's wide Circuit, let it speak
The Maker's high magnificence, who built
So spacious, and his Line stretcht out so far;
That Man may know he dwells not in his own;
An Edifice too large for him to fill,
Lodg'd in a small partition, and the rest
Ordain'd for uses to his Lord best known.
The swiftness of those Circles áttribute,
Though numberless, to his Omnipotence,
That to corporeal substances could add
Speed almost Spiritual.
(PL 8.100-10)
This passage exemplifies the ambiguity that Milton exploits throughout the poem. The mention of "corporeal" and "spiritual" substances is actually incidental to Raphael's injunction to Adam, but a reader aware of Milton's materialism will immediately recognize that the distinction between corporeal and spiritual is a difference that does not entail a different "matter." As Milton explains in his Artis Logicae, although "form" is second to "matter" in the order of nature and/or time, "the form is the cause through which a thing is what it is" (CPW 8: 231-32). Thus the present passage from Paradise Lost distinguishes between corporeal and spiritual, but that distinction fits precisely with Milton's [End Page 81] monist account of the various forms within a material continuum. The poetry remains susceptible to a dualist interpretation, however, and does not require a materi-alist reading.
The careful arrangement of this interpretive openness is part of the epic's unusual capacity to demonstrate the thoroughly biblical character of Milton's position. It could be argued that this passage from Book 8, by giving spiritual substance a "speed" at all, has implicitly, but unavoidably, presented spiritual reality as extended in space (though insensible). Indeed, that is precisely the position that Milton holds (incorporeal extension is possible), but the lines immediately following the above passage quickly place such "extension" so far beyond human reckoning that they again emphasize the difference rather than the material continuity between spiritual and corporeal:
mee [Raphael] thou think'st not slow,
Who since the Morning hour set out from Heav'n
Where God resides, and ere mid-day arriv'd
In Eden, distance inexpressible
By Numbers that have name.
(PL.110-14)
Again, this passage might support a claim that Milton views heaven as no less material than earth. However, insofar as angels are said to "visit" the earth at all, whether in Paradise Lost or in any biblical narrative, there is an unavoidable spatial dimension implied in a literal reading of such accounts. As noted also, the "distance inexpressible" between heaven and earth, though traversible by an angel, clearly places the continuity beyond human discernment. The important point is that in the seventeenth century, the implied spatiality of Raphael's account would not have been taken to imply materialist monism any more than would biblical narratives that mention the visitation of angels "coming from heaven." 6 Milton's subtlety here is the ultimate vindication of his materialism. He is no less ambiguous about the relation between corporeal and spiritual reality than the Bible itself. The radical adherence of his poem to the consistency of Scripture indicts his reader's failure to discern the same monism implicit in the biblical narratives.
In another key monist passage, Raphael explains to Adam the sublimational dynamics of digestion that enable angels to eat human food:
and food alike those pure
Intelligential substances require
As doth your Rational; and both contain
Within them every lower faculty
Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste,
Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate,
And corporeal to incorporeal turn.
(5.407-13)
In order to fit this passage in with his equation of "material" and "corporeal," Fallon insists that "the turning of the corporeal to incorporeal must be taken as relative" (107); however, if we take the passage strictly on its own terms, no such relativizing is needed. Corporeal and incorporeal are two kinds of substance that can exist as a result of the "one matter" being "indu'd" with form (5.473). The "rational" substance of human (corporeal/sensible) life arises from that form which actualizes the sensible as well as the intellectual potentialities in matter. The same discussion between Adam and Raphael later reiterates the point regarding the changes in substance amidst the continuity of matter:
flow'rs and thir fruit
Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublim'd
To vital spirits aspire, to animal,
To intellectual, give both life and sense,
Fancy and understanding, whence the Soul
Reason receives, and reason is her being,
Discursive, or Intuitive; discourse
Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours,
Differing in degree, of kind the same.
(5.482-90)
It seems to be from this passage that Fallon argues: "Milton's materialist monism treats spirit and matter as manifestations, differing in degree and not qualitatively, of the one corporeal substance" (102). In fact, the key terms should be reversed to read: "Milton's materialist monism treats spiritual and corporeal substances as manifestations, differing in degree and hence qualitative-ly, of the one first matter." Raphael's point is that the distinction between discursive and intuitive reason is simply a difference of degree (rank) among the same kind (category) of "rational substances." That is, although humans and angels are both rational substances differentiated out of matter, the former are necessarily corporeal (sensible) while the latter are potentially but not necessarily sensible in every respect.
The failure to distinguish between "matter" and "body" introduces an incoherence into the interpretation of Milton's monism in both his prose and his poetry. Raphael can use the word "soul" in his discussion of digestion because Milton equates soul and body; both terms name the same single human rational and sentient [End Page 82] being differentiated out of matter. Milton invites a monist interpretation of Raphael's claim, but does not require it, because of the different senses of the term "soul" that are available to his readers. At the same time, Milton's rejection of dualist accounts of human nature should not be taken to imply that his broader use of the distinction between spiritual and corporeal substance is only a "relative corporality." Recognizing the matter-body dis-tinction is pivotal for maintaining the coherence of Milton's unusual monism that allows him to maintain the distinction between spiritual and corporeal beings. No being (existent or entity) is a composite of different substances, in Milton's view, because all beings are differentiated out of the one first matter, but that also means that both corporeal and spiritual beings consist of that first matter (as it is endued with form). As a result, his position is only defensible if the concept of "first matter" is kept distinct from "body," or corporeal substance. The matter-body distinction is also crucial if we are to discern the subtlety of the poetic account of monism that Milton offers in Paradise Lost. By closely following biblical precedent in his poem, Milton is able implicitly to indict those who do not perceive the monism either in his epic or in Scripture. De Doctrina did not soon issue from the press; had it done so, it would sooner have revealed the failure of Milton's readers to discern the monism in Paradise Lost, and would have thereby challenged the dualism in their reading of the Bible. 7
University of Ottawa
1. Fallon is clearly not the first to offer an account of the relation between Milton's epic theodicy and the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and Henry More, but his objective is to challenge previous accounts. Much of his argument is shaped by his concern to redress the perceived excesses in Marjorie Nicolson's accounts (influenced by A. O. Lovejoy) of the relation between Milton, Hobbes and More (Fallon 4n13; cf. 244). Although some of the broader objectives of Fallon's position are quite plausible--for example, that Milton maintains a Hebraic monist view of human nature, in opposition to Greek dualism and modern mechanism (246)--the detailed handling of key terms, shaped by reaction to earlier accounts, does not (as we shall see) always facilitate his argument. In fact, we find in Nicolson's essay on Milton and Henry More the very idea of the "corporeity of spirits" that creates so much difficulty for Fallon's interpretation (Nicolson 435).
2. I shall not here address the current debate over the authorship of De Doctrina Christiana for two main reasons: first, the report by Campbell et al. (in response to Hunter) is still interim and remains "uncertain" regarding "the relationship of De Doctrina Christiana to the Milton oeuvre" (Campbell et al. 110); second, although the present analysis starts by noting how Fallon uses De Doctrina, the final objective is to show that the formal telos of Paradise Lost argues against the attempt to make explicit and necessary connections between the poem and the theological treatise. That said, the goal here is not simply to "divorce Milton's poetry from its complex theological framework" (Haskin 129), but to grant Milton's poetry the fullest extent of its theological subtlety and complexity, by observing how the rigorously biblicist form of Paradise Lost is the best vindication of a theology that is necessarily never more explicit than Scripture itself.
3. The comparative parallel structure of the sentence is even more apparent in the Latin text:
Spiritus enim, ut substantia excellentior, substantiam utique inferiorem virtualiter, quod aiunt, et eminenter, in se continet; ut facultas facultatem spiritualis et rationalis corpoream, sentientem nempe et vegetativam. (Works 15: 24)
4. As W. B. Hunter points out, Milton's monism is distinct from both Thomist and Aristotelian monism. Milton sides with Aristotle against Aquinas by maintaining that all forms, including the human soul, are ex potentia materia; yet Milton also sides with Aquinas (and orthodoxy in general) against Aristotle by maintaining that materia prima is not simply an abstraction (in view of Genesis 1:2; Hunter, "Milton's Power" 555-59). However, Milton's position also contrasts with the Thomist view that matter is the "principle of individuation," where the "actual individuation is effected by [a being's] existence in matter" (Ong 233n). For Milton, because "form" ("proper essence") is that which "gives a thing its proper existence" (CPW 8: 233-34), essence is the principle of individuation out of a universal matter.
5. Fallon is not alone in his approach to the two works. It seems that whether critics have typically tried to use De Doctrina as a gloss on Paradise Lost or to view the treatise primarily as a theological work in its own right (e.g., Haskin 132) or to ascertain the status of the whole treatise (e.g., Campbell et al. 103), there remains a persistent over-simplification concerning the ways in which the statements from one discursive form can be transposed onto those of another (notwithstanding the immense erudition and meticulous scholarly attention brought to bear on these issues). Let me also emphasize that my intention here is not to undermine the importance of Fallon's often valuable work, but to clar-ify and strengthen his main argument by demonstrating both the necessity and the means of removing the lexical opacity entailed by his use of "matter" and "body."
6. Milton's treatment of angels in Paradise Lost deserves separate analysis in terms of the distinction between "first matter" and body, but some of his emphases are worth noting already. Angels make themselves visible to humans (i.e., their form of matter is capable of being perceived but is not necessarily sensible to humans in every respect; 4.677-78); the comments about angelic intimacy, as well as the angelic observations about the difficulty in trying "to exclude / Spiritual substance with corporeal bar" (4.584-85), both indicate a mode of extension and penetrability specifically distinct from "body" (8.620-29); the battle in heaven is explicitly based on comparative analogies between heaven and earth: "lik'ning spiritual to corporeal forms" (5.573). If these passages are to avoid contradicting the implied ontology of the poem, they require that all forms are material but not corporeal.
7. I am thankful to Nicholas von Maltzahn for his encouraging and detailed responses to an earlier draft of this paper. I am also grateful to David Jeffrey for his comments on a previous version of the essay. Financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada enabled me to take the time required to complete the paper for publication.
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