Chapter 8

“Plastick Powers” and the Power

of Sympathy in Cudworth and More
The Spirit of Nature and Plastic Nature

Sarah Hutton

8.1. Introduction

In this paper I discuss ideas of causal powers in nature in the philos-

ophy of Ralph Cudworth and Henry More, who are generally known
as “Cambridge Platonists” (a sobriquet acquired in the 19th century).
As this sobriquet implies, their philosophy is in many ways a dia-
logue with antiquity. And this is especially true of their ideas on nat-
ural causality, Cudworth’s hypothesis of the “Plastic Life of Nature”
and More’s “Spirit of Nature” (also called the “Hylarchic Principle,”
that is to say a principle which governs matter), which are distinc-
tive contributions to 17th-​century causal theory. Conceived as spir-
itual agents overseeing the operations of nature, they were formulated
partly in reaction against contemporary mechanistic accounts of the
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190 Sarah Hutton

operations of nature (the so-​called “mechanical philosophy”) and

partly in accordance with their own Platonizing metaphysics of sub-
stance. After an overview of their ideas of power and how these sit
with their metaphysics, I briefly outline the Cartesian context, high-
lighting those aspects of Cartesian physics which prompted them to
posit active, vital, and plastic powers, capable of self-​direction. The
last section of the paper discusses their respective hypotheses in more
detail, showing how they drew on classical antiquity for a harmonious
conception of nature invested with teleological agency, in which the
power of sympathy has key role.
First, some preliminary remarks: to include the Cambridge Platonists
in a history of concepts perhaps requires a word of justification, since they
tend to be regarded as at best transitional figures, who had little impact
on the later philosophy. This assumption is fueled by a widespread prej-
udice that Platonism is an unworldly philosophy disconnected from the
physical world, and ignorance of their philosophical legacy. It is a general
truism that the designation “transitional” implies secondary importance.
But what counts as transitional depends on how you choose to tell the
story of how philosophical history unfolds, and therefore the points be-
tween which transitional figures are deemed to fall. In any case, from a
historical perspective, what happens in between those points is often
more revealing of the actual developments in process than are the works
of figures deemed canonical. For this reason, so-​called “transitional” fig-
ures provide a crucial context within which to interpret the hardy peren-
nials of the history of philosophy. Whatever their reputation now, both
More and Cudworth were in fact respected as significant thinkers in their
own time, and subsequently.
Cudworth’s account of Plastic Nature, or, more exactly, “the Plastic
Life of Nature,” is contained in a “Digression” printed in the first
part of his main published work, The True Intellectual System of
the Universe (1678). More’s conception of the Spirit of Nature de-
veloped over time. The fullest account appears in the Preface to
his A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings (1662) and his
 “Plastick Powers” and the Power of Sympathy 191

Immortality of the Soul (1659).1 Both are conceived as immaterial

substances which regulate and direct the operations of nature in an
orderly fashion, to account for life, and to secure overall harmony, in
accordance with divine intentions. While broadly similar, they are
not identical in all particulars. More holds the Spirit of Nature to
be a single entity. Cudworth discusses a single Plastic Nature, but
he allows the possibility of a plurality Plastic Natures either in indi-
vidual creatures or in other parts of the universe.2 For More the Spirit
of Nature has extension, in accordance with his view that all immate-
rial reality is extended, including God and human souls. Cudworth,
however, regarded Plastic Nature, and all immaterial substances, as
non-​extended “energies” (“which though they act upon Bulk and
Extension, yet are themselves Unbulkie and devoid of Quantity and
Dimensions.”)3 As an energy of nature Plastic Nature is, as it were,
mind-​infused nature, and therefore more fully integrated into the
fabric of the created world as a vitalistic alternative to mechanistic
explanations of the operations of nature (a “certain Lower Life than
the Animal”). More discusses his Hylarchic Principle largely in rela-
tion to the cosmos as a whole and the laws of physics,4 principally as a
corrective to the mechanical philosophy. In this respect the Spirit of
Nature functions as an adjunct to mechanical powers, rather than as
an alternative to them, as he explains in his Immortality of the Soul: “at
a certain distance the Spirit of Nature in some regards leaves the mo-
tion of Matter to the pure laws of Mechanicks, but within other
bounds checks it.”5 Both hypotheses had a long afterlife in the 18th

1 Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678); Henry More,
Immortality of the Soul (London 1659), and A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings
(London 1662).
2 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 171.
3 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 781.
4 The Spirit of Nature also has an important role in More’s account of the soul. See his Immortality
of the Soul.
5 More, Immortality of the Soul, 465.
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192 Sarah Hutton

century, but neither figures in standard accounts of the history of

philosophy.6
Perhaps the first thing that strikes their readers is their unfamiliar
terminology. Here it is helpful to recall first that they were among the
earliest English thinkers to write in the vernacular, and secondly, that
a characteristic of this period is the shifting ground of philosophical
discourse reflected terminologically in elision and interchange of Latin
terms for mental powers (potestas, potentia, facultas, virtus, and vis).7
This observation applies just as much to natural philosophy and is not
confined to Latin terms. Although Cudworth and More wrote in in
the vernacular, a striking feature of their philosophy is their use not
just of Latin, but of Greek terminology (e.g., energeia, dunamis, kinesis,
antitupon, not to mention hegemonikon, autexousion, to eph hemin).
This is, of course, a reminder that most philosophers in this period had
a humanistic training. It may also be indicative of the linguistic chal-
lenges for writing philosophy in the vernacular for the first time (i.e.,
without a well-​established conceptual vocabulary). This is certainly ev-
ident in their coinages of new English terms some of which are still
in use (e.g., self-​determination) and others not (e.g., “hylarchic”). But
their recourse to Greek and Latin terminology and neologisms based
on them was not simply linguistic necessity, nor was it pedantic affec-
tation. Cudworth’s and More’s propensity to employ terms in Greek
or derived from Greek highlights something more: that both were
attempting something new. In particular, they turned to classical antiq-
uity for a fund of terminology from outside the scholastic philosoph-
ical tradition—​and the new philosophy of their own time, for that
matter. It was partly for this reason that they set such store by Plato

6 They were taken up particularly by natural philosophers interested in botany, notably John Ray
and Nehemiah Grew. Jean Le Clerc published a translation of Cudworth’s “Digression” in his
journal Bibliotheque choisie between 1703 and 1706.
7 Federico Boccaccini and Anna Marmodoro, “Powers, Abilities and Skills in Early Modern
Philosophy,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25, no. 3 (2017): 435–​42.
 “Plastick Powers” and the Power of Sympathy 193

and especially Plotinus—​though they did not entirely reject Aristotle.

(Their Aristotelian sources were humanistic rather than scholastic.)
A striking (but too often overlooked) fact is that their sources for ideas
about powers in the physical world also included the Stoics, Epicurean
philosophy, and Sextus Empiricus. The Latin term for power is usu-
ally vis (force), sometimes virtus (virtue), though facultas (faculty) is
often used in the case of mental powers, and potentia in the case of
the power of God. However, Greek terms come in for power of nature
(energeia, dunamis) and the new ideas of the solidity or impenetra-
bility of matter (anti-​tupon). It is particularly in the case of psycholog-
ical powers and notions of autonomy or self-​power, that Greek terms
are brought into play—​in particular their new conception of free
will as self-​power which is expressed variously as autokinesie, and the
autexousion. This recourse to ancient philosophy was not at odds with
their embrace of developments in contemporary philosophy, in par-
ticular atomism and Cartesianism. What emerged from this dialogue
between ancient and modern were distinctive contributions to 17th-​
century causal theory: their conceptions of spiritual agency overseeing
the operations of nature as set out in More’s Hylarchic Principle or
Spirit of Nature and Cudworth’s Plastic Nature, which are endowed
with “plastic powers” or vital forces in contradistinction to mechanical
powers in the workings of nature. Spin-​offs from their discussions in-
cluded ideas of solidity, resistance, energy, to say nothing of conscious-
ness and unconsciousness.

8.2.  Souls, Bodies, and Powers

Both Cudworth and More shared the anti-​scholastic agenda of self-​

styled modernizers like Bacon, Hobbes, and Descartes. More rejected
scholastic philosophy as the

dotage of the confounded Schools, who have indued almost every

different Object of our Senses with a distinct Substantial form, and
194

194 Sarah Hutton

then puzzle themselves with endless scrupulosities about the gener-

ation, corruption, and mixtion of them.8

Both Cudworth and More embraced a version of atomistic natural phi-

losophy which had recently come into vogue, and which they regarded
as a revival of a form of ancient atomism. Part of the attraction of this
new philosophy was that it seemed consistent with the observable phe-
nomena of the physical world and that it attempted to explain the op-
erations of nature in terms of a few principles, without the apparatus of
Scholastic forms and qualities. As Cudworth put it, with this atomist
natural philosophy

there is no need of any thing else besides these simple Elements

of Magnitude, Figure, Site and Motion (which are all clearly in-
telligible as different Modes of extended Substance) to salve the
Corporeal Phaenomena by; and therefore, not of any Substantial
Forms distinct from the Matter; nor of any other Qualities really
existing in the Bodies without . . . nor of any Intentional Species or
Shews, propagated from the Objects to our Senses.9

Another attraction of this philosophy was that, matter being inert ex-
tension and therefore devoid of active powers, it was necessary to posit
active principles of some kind, extraneous to matter, to account for life
and movement. By contrast with matter, “Life and Vnderstanding are
Active Powers, Vigours, and Perfections.”10 Since such powers inhered
in substance which was necessarily immaterial, this philosophy
(“rightly understood”) implied the existence of immaterial substances
like spirits or souls—​and ultimately, of course, God.

8 More, Immortality of the Soul, 466.

9 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 7.
10 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 789.
 “Plastick Powers” and the Power of Sympathy 195

The need for an immaterial causal agency was a point which More
took up in his second letter to Descartes. Here he suggested that there
might be something in nature (“aliquid exerit se in natura”) for which
a mechanical explanation (“ratio Mechanistica”) cannot be given, and
that a candidate for this “something” might be incorporeal substance,
which he claimed has such astonishing power that it can control matter
directly without the need of artificial helps.11 The term he uses for this
power is virtus, implying power as a quality or property rather than
mere impulsive force.
A natural philosophy where causal powers are conceived in terms of
spirit acting on inert bodies sits comfortably with the key principles
of their metaphysics, which distinguished two kinds of substance, one
active, the other passive, the former immaterial and the latter material.
As Cudworth put it: “the General Heads and Principles of whatsoever
was in the Universe” are “Passive Matter, and the other Active Power,
Vigour and Vertue.”12 “Cogitation, and the Power of Moving Matter”
belong to the latter.
Although both Cudworth and More often write as if powers and
properties are different things (More, for instance, refers to “Natures,
Powers and Properties”), in practice powers are a type of property. For
example More differentiates between varieties of spirit by the “powers
or properties” intrinsic to them. The “General notion of a spirit”
he writes

can be contracted into Kindes, by no other Differences then such as

may be called peculiar powers or properties belonging to one Spirit
and excluded from another. . . . From whence it will follow, that if we
describe these several kindes of Spirits by immediate and intrinsecall

11 More, Epistolae Qiattuor ad Renatum Des-​Cartes, in A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings,

vol. 1, 80. More’s comments indicate that was already convinced of the power of incorporeal sub-
stance, as he told Descartes.
12 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 27.
196

196 Sarah Hutton

properties, we have given as good Definitions of them as any one can

give of any thing in the world.13

Both Cudworth and More held that powers do not exist independ-
ently but must inhere in some underlying substance and both agreed
that active powers are only found in immaterial substance. (In fact, for
More extension of spirit is a pre-​condition of its having attributes and
therefore powers inhering in it, and he also held that spirits are always
joined to some kind of body or vehicle.)14
The metaphysical picture of both Cudworth and More is rich
in different kinds of immaterial entities, each distinguished by the
powers with which it is invested. Accordingly there is a scale or
hierarchy of immaterial entities extending from spirits or simple
energies, to animal and human souls and angels. In Immortality
of the Soul, for example, More itemizes four kinds of spirit: sem-
inal forms, animal souls, human souls, and angels, each vested with
special powers, some of which overlap: so, for example animal
souls have powers of sensation as well as formative and vegetative
powers, while human souls possess all these, together with rational
powers.15
The powers vested in incorporeal substances are many. Cudworth
and More are wont to refer to a plethora of powers—​powers to think,
to feel, to grow, to reproduce, the “power of motion,” the power to pen-
etrate, the “power of altering the matter,” the “power of being vitally
united with and actuating body,” and so on. These include the mul-
tiple powers associated with the higher and lower parts of the human
soul: practical reason, conscience, intellect, judgment, reflection, sense
perception, desires and appetites, passions, feelings, and especially free

13 More, Immortality of the Soul, 50.

14 Henry More, Divine Dialogues (London, 1668), 1: 130–​31.
15 More, Immortality of the Soul, 49ff.
 “Plastick Powers” and the Power of Sympathy 197

will or liberum arbitrium which they construe as self-​power, “having a

Power to Act with in ourselves.”16
It is beyond the scope of this volume to discuss powers of the mind.17
But it is relevant to note that insofar as they concern the relationship
of the soul with the body, psychological powers are natural powers. In
his later, unpublished writings, Cudworth posits another form of self-​
power or autokinesie as the internal principle of action in the animal
soul (which in humans constitutes the lower part of the soul, which
forms the interface with the body). This governs the processes of “an-
imal life,” including sensation and imagination, passions and appetites.
Also called “animal free will” its capacities are restricted to the needs of
animal life, and are therefore limited to the self-​interest of the animal
soul (“private utility”), which basically reduce to self-​preservation. As
a power of self-​determination it is in many ways similar to the self-​
determining power of the higher soul (“free will moral”). But the
distinction between them turns on the end for which either power
works—​animal autokinesie serves the natural necessities of animal
and human life, while moral free will serves the moral good of rational
(human) beings.18
Thus the powers inherent in immaterial entities are understood
not simply as general properties or principles of action, but capabil-
ities for particular kinds of action, specialist powers with particular
functions—​e.g., growth or sight. Such powers are not just properties
which can cause change, but have the capability for a particular kind of
change, a change with a particular end in view. Active powers are thus

16 Henry More, An Account of Virtue (London 1690), 175.This is an English translation of Enchiridion
ethicum, præcipua moralis philosophiæ rudimenta complectens, 1668.
17 It is a moot point whether a discussion of natural powers in the Cambridge Platonists can be sepa-
rated from their conception of mental powers vested in the human mind, since both are in a sense
forms of mental causality. As Cudworth put it, “he that asserts a Plastick Nature, asserts Mental
Causality in the World” (Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, I, 194).
18 Cudworth, “De liberum abitrium,” London, British Library, Add. MS 4980, p. 5.
198

198 Sarah Hutton

implicitly conceived teleologically in terms of the purpose they serve,

and as being capable of directing themselves toward that end.

8.3.  Powers and Bodies

Cudworth and More both held that, by contrast with immaterial

substance, matter is void of active powers of any kind. Since bodies
have no internal principle of motion, the movement of bodies is es-
sentially a passive response to external causes. Nevertheless bodies are
understood by More and Cudworth to have powers of a sort. Bodies,
after all, have properties which affect how they behave in response to
external causes, so these may be considered powers in a passive sense.
Cudworth and More frequently refer to the “mechanical powers
of bodies” (my italics), by which they mean chiefly the capacity of
bodies to be moved. But, initially at least, More was inclined to at-
tribute a power of moving to bodies, which is activated on the occa-
sion of contact with another body. Writing to Descartes he argued
that the movement of bodies may be explained non-​mechanically,
in terms of affect rather than impact. Denying that motion can be
transferred from one body to another, he argued that bodies move by
their own intrinsic power (vi sua) when stimulated by contact with
another body, that

one [body] arouses the other as if from sleep, and that the bodies
aroused this way transfer themselves from one place to another by
their own power [sua vi]. And I consider this property of body to be
like the shadow or image of life.19

Besides extension, they also argued that another essential property of

bodies is solidity or impenetrability, and that impenetrability is not a

19 More, Epistolae, 108, in A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings. My translation.

 “Plastick Powers” and the Power of Sympathy 199

neutral property but entails resistance to or prevention of penetration

by other bodies. It is therefore a kind of activity.

Magnitude or Extension as such, is meer Outside or Outwardness, it

hath nothing Within, no Self-​Active Power or Vertue, all its Activity,
being either Keeping out or Hindering, any other Extended Thing,
from Penetrating into it.20

A term which they adopt (and adapt) for the resistance of bodies, is the
Greek term for resistance, “antitypia.” “The essential and positive dif-
ferentia of body,” writes More, “is that it is anti-​tupon, or impenetrable
and physically divisible into parts.”21 For Cudworth matter is not
merely geometric extension, but “resisting or antitypous extension.”22

Body being nothing but Antitypous Extension, or Resisting Bulk,

nothing but mere Outside, Aliud extra Aliud, together with Passive
Capability, hath no Internal Energy, Self-​activity, or Life belonging
to it; it is not able so much as to Move it self, and therefore much less
can it Artificially direct its own Motion.23

That Cudworth and More held bodies to have a power of resistance

highlights a fundamental difference between their conception of body
and Descartes’s geometric conception of body as extension, differen-
tiated only by size, shape, position, and motion. In fact the solidity
of bodies was another point which More raised in his correspondence
with Descartes, when he tried to persuade him that all substance, both
corporeal and incorporeal, is extended, and that the difference be-
tween them is that the former is solid and the latter not.

20 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 830.

21 More, Enchiridon metphysicum (1671), Chapter 28.1, translated by Alexander Jacob as Henry
More’s Manual of Metaphysics, 2 vols. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1995) 1:118.
22 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 161.
23 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 164.
200

200 Sarah Hutton

8.4.  The Cartesian Context

It is not accidental that the name of Descartes has already figured

in this account of Cudworth’s and More’s thinking on powers, since
Cartesianism formed the immediate background to their formu-
lation of their hypotheses. Here it is worth emphasizing that, not-
withstanding the aforementioned differences from Descartes, their
response to Cartesianism was not all negative.24 On the contrary,
they considered that Cartesian physics had much to recommend it
as a new philosophy of nature. It helped, of course that they inter-
preted Descartes as an atomist. From their perspective the advantages
of Cartesian physics was that it met the requirements for a plausible
natural philosophy (see above). First in its intelligibility—​it may be
understood by the mind independently of the senses and without
the need to posit substantial forms (it is “no otherwise than intellec-
tually comprehended”).25 Descartes’s geometric conception of body,
Cudworth claimed, “renders the Corporeal World Intelligible to
us . . . and we cannot clearly and distinctly conceive anything in Bodies
else.”26 Secondly, since on this definition body is devoid of powers, it
is necessary to posit non-​corporeal causes of some kind. Furthermore,
since, unlike Hobbes, Descartes was a committed dualist, the expecta-
tion was that he would do so.
But the disadvantage of Cartesian physics from the perspective of
More and Cudworth was that Descartes had not supplied a causal

24 On More, Cudworth, and the reception of Cartesianism, see John Henry, “The Reception of
Cartesianism,” in The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Peter
Anstey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 136–​43; Sarah Hutton, “Cartesianism in Britain,”
in The Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism, ed. Steve Nadler, Tad Schmaltz, and
Delphine Antoine-​Mahut (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 496–​513. For More’s response
to Descartes, see Alan Gabbey, “Philosophia cartesiana triumphata: Henry More and Descartes
(1646–​71),” in Problems in Cartesianism, ed. Thomas M. Lennon, John M. Nicholas, and John W.
Davis (Kingston: McGill-​Queens University Press, 1982), 171–​250.
25 Ralph Cudworth, A Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, ed. Sarah Hutton
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 92.
26 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 48.
 “Plastick Powers” and the Power of Sympathy 201

principle beyond the mechanical laws of impact. They did not think
that “Mechanical powers” and the rules of impact were the whole story
for natural causality. Cudworth criticized the “narrow principles” of
the Cartesians in reducing immaterial substance to conscious cogita-
tion. More charged that Descartes was a “nullibist,” as it were a “no-​
where-​ist,” because, although he posited an immaterial soul, he failed
to demonstrate its whereabouts, or its role in natural causation. They
could not accept that the chance collision of matter in motion can ac-
count for life, or the structure and orderliness of the world around us.
Cudworth denied

that this whole Mundane System, together with Plants, and Animals,
was derived, meerly from the Necessary and Unguided Motion, of
the Small Particles of Matter, at first turned round in a Vortex, or
else jumbled all together in a Chaos.27

More objected that Descartes “thinks he has solved all mechanically

he treats of ”:

But, to deal freely, I finde none of his Solutions will hold by mere
Mechanicks: not his formation of Suns, Stars nor Planets; not
the Generation nor Motion of the Magnetick particles; not his
Hypothesis of the Flux and Reflux of the Sea; not the figure and
colours of the Rainbow; not the Winds, nor Clouds, nor Rain, nor
Thunder: neither of these, nor of any other Phaenomena, has he
given sufficient Mechanicall causes.28

They appealed to experience to argue, contra Descartes, that there are

powers in nature besides the mechanical powers by which bodies move
as it were by “clockwork,” citing phenomena for which they believed

27 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 683.

28 More, Divine Dialogues, 1:36.
202

202 Sarah Hutton

the new mechanical physics could not account, or which contradicted

the claims made in its behalf. Examples of the observable phenomena
in nature which could not be explained mechanistically include
the movement of the tides, the phenomenon of resonance, gravita-
tion, meteorological effects, and magnetism. A good part of More’s
Enchiridion metaphysicum is taken up with cataloguing examples from
the natural world, such as the structure of plants and animals, whose
formation, propagation, system of nourishment, beauty, and utility
cannot be explained by “the blind motions and jumblings of Matter
and meer Corporeall Beings.”29 More even claimed that the Cartesian
cosmos couldn’t work without major interventions, in order, for in-
stance, to ensure the sun retains a spherical shape, that the stars don’t
crumble into the ether.30
What was at issue here was not just the need to refer such effects to
an immaterial agency, but for there to be a power or powers which are
able to direct themselves or others to some end. Matter, after all, lacks
not just the power to move, but the power to direct its motion: “it
is not able so much as to Move it self, and therefore much less can it
Artficially direct its own Motion.”31 What was needed was a teleo-
logical principle, the obverse of “blind and fortuitous” movement of
bodies. A major sticking point for them, as for others of Descartes’s
critics, was his rejection of final causality in physics.
Thus, Cudworth and More concluded that Descartes’s mechanistic
account of the workings of nature was not up to the task of explain-
ing the appearance of things to be observed in the physical universe.
Their concerns about the shortcomings of Cartesian physics shape
the solutions which they proposed. Their answer was not to refer
everything to the direct intervention of God (the occasionalist’s so-
lution). Although that would guarantee perfection in the operations

29 More, Immortality of the Soul, 66.

30 More, A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings, Preface General, xv.
31 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 163.
 “Plastick Powers” and the Power of Sympathy 203

of nature, self-​evidently the workings of nature are not perfect, but are
subject to “bungles”(as More put it). To explain everything by means
of the direct intervention of divine power would amount to replacing
one kind of determinism with another. What they proposed instead
leaves direct divine intervention out of the equation by providing a
buffer between God and the physical world in the form of a subordi-
nate agency to which divine power is, as it were, delegated (“vicarious
power of God”). Their respective hypotheses of the Spirit of Nature
and Plastic Nature propose “Plastic” powers in nature which combine
formative power with purpose, self-​activity with the means to achieve
the ends which God intended, while allowing for a measure of con-
tingency. By this means they account for everything which is “above
the Power of Fortuitous Mechanism effected,” or, in More’s words,
“such Phaenomena in the World . . . as cannot be resolved into meer
Mechanical powers.”32

8.5.  Two Hypotheses

Cudworth and More formulated their respective hypotheses of

Plastic Nature and the Spirit of Nature to rectify the shortcomings
which they identified in contemporary natural philosophy. To do so
they looked to classical antiquity, taking from the Greeks the idea
of Nature as cosmos, that is to say a harmonious, unified, and teleo-
logically directed system. For that reason they invoke not just Plato,
but also the Aristotelian conception of nature as art (techne).33 There
are many other echoes of classical antiquity in the way More and
Cudworth present their respective hypotheses—​the Platonic World

32 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 171–​72; More, Immortality of the Soul, 450.
33 Sarah Hutton, “Ralph Cudworth: Plastic Nature, Cognition and the Cognizable World,” in
Causation and Cognition, ed. Dominik Perler and Sebastian Bender (London: Routledge,
2019); Sarah Hutton, “Re-​inventing the Vegetable Soul,” in Vegetable Powers: Endowing Bodily
Life from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, ed. Fabrizio Baldassari and Andreas Blank
(Dordrecht: Springer, forthcoming).
204

204 Sarah Hutton

Soul, Stoic Pneuma, and the Stoic logoi spermatikoi to name the main
ones.34 However, despite affinities, Plastic Nature and the Spirit of
Nature do not replicate these particular classical precedents. Neither
of them is a material spirit and neither is actually conceived as the soul
of the physical world. In fact their most important debt to antiquity
is to Plotinus (a debt which Cudworth and More acknowledge). This
explains not simply how they interpret Plato, but their methodolog-
ical habit of adopting and adapting the philosophical ideas of others,
including the Stoics, for their own purposes—​for which they found
a precedent in Plotinus’s philosophical methodology.35 The appeal of
Plotinus no doubt also resides in the fact that they saw in his philos-
ophy concerns about the shortcomings of the materialist and deter-
ministic philosophies of his time which were parallel to their own. To
convey the idea that the Spirit of Nature and Plastic Nature function
as conduits of divine power in nature, they evoke Platonist concepts
of form and copy and emanation, presenting Plastic Nature and the
Spirit of Nature as imprints or transcripts of divine wisdom, and as
repositories of the forms of things. Plastic Nature for Cudworth is a
shadow (“Umbratile Imitation”) of divine wisdom.36 More describes
the Spirit of Nature in emanationist terms as “the last Ideal or
Omniform Efflux from God.”37 This antique idiom belies the contem-
porary focus of their concerns.
More conceived his Spirit of Nature and Cudworth his Plastic
Nature as more than simply powers clusters, but all-​encompassing
immaterial causes in the physical world, which function as interme-
diaries between God and created nature—​hence More’s description

34 Plato conceived of the world as having a soul which governs material nature. Stoics posited a ma-
terial spirit (“pneuma” or breath) as the sustaining cause of natural operations, as well as causal
principles which they termed “seeds.”
35 On Plotinus’s methodology, see M. F. Wagner, “Plotinus, Nature and the Scientific Spirit,” in
Neoplatonism and Nature, ed. M. F. Wagner (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002), 241–​76, 242.
36 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 163.
37 More, Preface General, xvi, in A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings.
 “Plastick Powers” and the Power of Sympathy 205

of the Spirit of Nature as “the Vicarious Power of God upon this

great Automaton, the World.”38At a micro-​level, they each function as
natura naturans, nature which oversees the structure of living things,
and regulates its day-​to-​day operations. At a macro level they guarantee
the overall harmony of created nature, natura naturata or cosmos. They
ensure that the operations of nature are conformable to the observed
appearances of things (the “Phaenomena in the world”) and with di-
vine intentions. At the heart of what they do is design. At a micro-​
level, their function is formative (hence the term “Plastick”): they are
responsible for the structure and formation of living organisms (“the
Efformation and Organization of the Bodies of Animals, as well as the
other Phenomena”).39 Design is implicit in function, structuring the
organs (e.g., eyes and hands) and organisms (e.g., plants) for particular
purposes—​especially for supporting life (hence the adjective “vital”).
But the design of natural things is ultimately in the service of macro-​
level intentionality, for the larger purposes of ensuring the overall har-
mony of the working of nature, so that it behaves in accordance with
God’s purposes. In Cudworth’s words, Plastic Nature acts “for Ends,
or in Order to Good.”40 More emphasizes that the Spirit of Nature
acts, according to God’s “Comprehension and Purpose,” for the sake
of “the good of the Universe.”41 Both Plastic Nature and the Spirit of
Nature are therefore teleological conceptions of natural causality, with
the power to bring order and harmony to what would otherwise be a
haphazard jumble of atoms.
For this reason, a principal part of the inbuilt design of both Plastic
Nature and the Spirit of Nature is that they are specifically designed
to work on matter, as it were to bring matter to heel, so as to make the
laws of mechanism work. Plastic Nature has the power to move matter

38 More, Antidote against Atheism, 47, in A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings.

39 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 147.
40 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 172.
41 More, Preface General, xvi, in A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings.
206

206 Sarah Hutton

“vitally,” while the Spirit of Nature, according to More, directs matter

by means of “plastical power”:

pervading the whole Matter of the Universe, and exercising a plas-

tical power therein . . . directing the parts of the Matter and their
Motion, as cannot be resolved into meer Mechanical powers.42

But the claim that an immaterial agent can work on matter brings
them back to the same problem which they had raised about
Cartesian dualism, namely how does an immaterial power work on
a material one? The answer which Cudworth and More propose is
that it does so through a power not so far discussed, the power of
sympathy: both the Spirit of Nature and Plastic Nature work by the
power of sympathy.

8.6. Sympathy

Sympathy is of course a concept familiar from 18th-​century phi-

losophy where it figures as a type of feeling or sensitive awareness in
human beings, and is counterposed to reason.43 However, Cudworth
and More understand “sympathy” rather differently, as a causal power
in nature. This view of sympathy has roots in antiquity where it is
found across a variety of writings—​on natural history and medi-
cine, as well as philosophy, important sources being Pliny, Galen, the
Stoics, and especially Plotinus. Out of currency thereafter through
medieval times, the idea of sympathy as a causal power re-​emerges in
the Renaissance. At this time the term was often translated as “har-
mony,” consensus, or “amicitia” (friendship), in contradistinction to its

42 More, Immortality of the Soul, 450, in A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings.

43 See Eric Schliesser, ed., Sympathy: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). More’s and
Cudworth’s treatments of sympathy have been largely overlooked, though some work has been
done on Cudworth. See Sarah Hutton, “Salving the Phenomena of Mind: Energy, Hegemonikon,
and Sympathy in Cudworth,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25, no. 3 (2016): 465–​86.
 “Plastick Powers” and the Power of Sympathy 207

opposite, “antipathy”; a case in point is Girolamo Fracastoro’s widely

read De sympathia et antipathia rerum.44 In the 17th century More and
Cudworth were not alone in invoking sympathy in response to per-
ceived failings of atomistic and mechanistic philosophies.45 The major
source for both of them is Plotinus’s notion of sumpatheia or sympathy
(most fully discussed in Enneads 4.4).
Sympathy was conceived as a binding principle in nature to account for
the unity of all things and the general inter-​connectedness of all things.
It operates through affinities between things, which, as Cudworth puts
it, are expressed in the relations, “proportions, aptitudes and correspon-
dencies of things to one another in the great mundane system, or vital
machine of the universe.”46 Together with its contrary, “antipathy,” sym-
pathy was invoked as a way of explaining non-​apparent reciprocal effects
or action-​at-​a-​distance. The paradigm example of sympathy in action is
the phenomenon known as sympathetic resonance, where one string on a
musical instrument vibrates in harmony with another. This “sympathetic
vibration of strings” does not, apparently, admit of a mechanical explana-
tion. Another phenomenon inviting an explanation in terms of sympathy
rather than the impact of one body on another is magnetic attraction—​
this example illustrates the fact that sympathy does not operate by im-
pulsion, so much as through attraction or pulling together. Gravitation is
another effect attributed to sympathy. And sympathy was also invoked to
explain sight because there appeared to be no direct contact between the
object of vision and the eye.
There is some question as to whether sympathy should be regarded
as a property of things. Eyjólfur Emilsson interprets Plotinus’s con-
ception of sympathy as “primarily . . . a similarity of disposition or

44 Ann Moyer, “Sympathy in the Renaissance,” in Sympathy: A History, ed. Eric Schliesser

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 70–​101.
45 Christia Mercer cites some examples in her “Seventeenth-​Century Universal Sympathy,” in
Sympathy: A History, ed. Eric Schliesser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 107–​38.
46 Cudworth, A Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, 87.
208

208 Sarah Hutton

constitution, not of actual properties.”47 Certainly sympathetic action

can only occur where there is a correspondence between things (in-
cluding between corporeal things) and it is triggered when such things
are brought into relation with one another. To that extent things which
bear some resemblance (or correspondence) to one another have
the potential to produce sympathetic effects or a bond of sympathy.
Of course, in an orderly and harmonious system of nature, there are
many such correspondences. But while such elements may be potential
for sympathetic actions, they are not actual powers vested in matter.
For Cudworth and More it is the Spirit of Nature and Plastic Nature
which do the work, firstly by ordering nature, thereby producing the
correspondences and the unseen connections between things consti-
tutive of the “Sympathy, Harmony, and Agreement which is in things
and in the Conservation of the Whole.”48 Secondly, it is the Spirit of
Nature and Plastic Nature which bring things into relation with one
another—​e.g., the sounding of the G string on a viol, or other stringed
instrument, with the same string on a different instrument. Thirdly,
Plastic Nature and the Spirit of Nature are able to organize and di-
rect matter, because they themselves have some kind of relation with
matter, which is grounded in a bond of sympathy between matter and
spirit. Plastic Nature, Cudworth insists, “hath some Vital Sympathy
with that Matter which it Acts upon.”49 The unity of soul and body is a
bond of sympathy (a “Vital Sympathy, by which our Soul is united and
tied fast, as it were with a Knot, to the Body”).50
For Cudworth vital sympathy between soul and body arises from
their sharing symmetries and proportions internal to “the great mun-
dane system, or vital machine of the universe.” Plastic Nature, as it
were, taps into this harmony, producing a “sympathetic” effect, rather

47 Eyjólfur Emilsson, “Plotinus on sumpatheia,” in Sympathy. A History, ed. Eric Schliesser

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 36–​60.
48 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 372.
49 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 159
50 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 160.
 “Plastick Powers” and the Power of Sympathy 209

as the vibration of one string produces a vibration in another. Plastic

Nature is the “vital Principle” which makes this happen.

[W]hen upon the striking of a string on one viol, another string,

that is an unison to it in a distant viol, will dance and leap, and that
not from any mechanical cause (as some conceive) passively only,
but from a vital active principle in nature, which is affected with
concord and harmony.51

Cudworth illustrates this with the mythological conceit of nature

dancing to the tune of Pan (a symbol of nature):

the Ancient Mythologists represented the Nature of the Universe,

by Pan Playing upon a Pipe or Harp . . . as if Nature did, by a kind
of Silent Melody, make all the Parts of the Universe every where
Daunce in measure & Proportion, it self being as it were in the
mean time delighted and ravished with the Reecchoing of its own
Harmony.52

More’s explanation of how the Spirit of Nature operates by sympathy

is more prosaic. More’s term for sympathy is “congruity.” And the
“congruity” by which immaterial substance is united with mate-
rial substance is a “vital congruity” (because it is by this means that
matter is animated). More gets around the problem that soul and
body are unlike by arguing that the power of “vital congruity” entails
some adjustments to both matter and the spirit in order to enhance
the correspondence or resemblance between them. Both matter and
spirit must be “duly prepared”: on the one hand a body’s material in-
terface with spirit must be softened to make it more spirit-​like, while
on the other spirit must become more viscous and therefore more

51 Cudworth, A Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, 99.

52 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 158.
210

210 Sarah Hutton

like matter (and this is an office of the Spirit of Nature). The ability
to develop this congruity in spirit is a “power in Spirit” which More
calls “hylopathia.”53 This conjunction between the Spirit of Nature
and matter is itself a form of sympathetic relationship achieved in
this way.
So, for example, in the case of the sympathetic vibration of strings,
More argues that the Spirit of Nature is the connector between the
strings, so that vibration in one produces vibration in the other:

therefore we must suppose, that both the strings are united with
some one incorporeal Being, which has a different Unity and
Activity from Matter, but yet a Sympathy therewith; which af-
fecting this immaterial Being, makes it affect the Matter in the same
manner in another place, where it does symbolize with that other
in some predisposition or qualification, as these two strings doe in
being tuned Unisons to one another: and this, without sending any
particles to the Matter it does thus act upon.54

In this respect the Spirit of Nature is analogous to Stoic pneuma, with

the difference that it is immaterial.

8.7.  Plastic Powers: Active or Passive?

The Spirit of Nature and Plastic Nature are evidently invested with
power to make things happen, and to keep the machinery of the
cosmos going. To that extent we can think of each of them as having
multiple powers, or as being the coordinator or overseer of the many
powers that exist in nature, among which is the power of sympathy.
Crucially they act in an end-​directed way. They don’t simply employ

53 More, Antidote against Atheism, 156, in A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings.

54 More, Immortality of the Soul, 194, in A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings. The term “sym-
bolize” (now obsolete) means “resemble” or “agree.”
 “Plastick Powers” and the Power of Sympathy 211

powers of different types, but they have the capacity to direct them.
They are able to do so because being imprinted with divine design
they are conduits for divine will and purpose. But this raises the ques-
tion, as to whether they exercise active power, whether they act spon-
taneously, or whether their actions are determined externally by the
will of God. For, in overseeing the workings of nature, both Plastic
Nature and the Spirit of Nature carry out God’s instructions, so they
do not act on their own initiative. More and Cudworth underline this
by using the metaphor of the drudge or servant, who acts on the or-
ders of his master, without knowing why he does what he does. For the
same reason, they are both said to be unconscious agents. Furthermore,
it is clear from Cudworth’s discussion that to act “Sympathetically”
is to act in a deterministic way, that is “Fatally according to Laws
and Impresses” or, more specifically, “Fatally and Sympathetically, ac-
cording to Laws and Commands, prescribed to it by a Perfect Intellect,
and imprest upon it.”55 The extent to which they are self-​active, the
extent to which each contains an internal principle of action, is not
wholly clear. Cudworth does, it is true, state that Plastic Nature is
“a simple Internal Energy” and uses the term “Vital Autokinesie”
or living self-​movement.56 But he also describes it as acting “fatally,”
since it “cannot act Electively nor with Discretion.”57 But there is a
difference between carrying out an order and being a cog in the wheel
of a machine. The whole point about Plastic Nature and the Spirit
of Nature as causal agents is that they do not work by “clockwork.”
Cudworth expresses the relationship between God and Plastic Nature
by analogy with that between architect and laborer. The former is the
designer who has drawn up the plans; the laborer may not fully under-
stand what s/​he is doing when carrying them out, but it is s/​he who
performs the actions of putting one brick on top of another, following

55 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 162.

56 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 159.
57 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 171.
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212 Sarah Hutton

the architect’s instructions. For More the Spirit of Nature is a cali-

brator of the system of nature. In neither case is the subordinate agent
a mere machine or mechanical instrument. It would appear, then, that
Plastic Nature and the Spirit of Nature have either a low level of self-​
active power, or some kind of median power between self-​active and
passive.

8.8. Conclusion

With their emphasis on plasticity, vitality, and teleology, Cudworth’s

and More’s hypotheses are open to the charge that, despite their re-
pudiation of scholastic forms and qualities, they had re-​introduced
substantial forms by the back door (as Leibniz suggested). The power
of sympathy, depending as it does on hidden connections, is a par-
ticularly “occult” power. In appealing to it, Cudworth and More are
open to the further charge that their attempt to compensate for the
poverty of the mechanistic view of nature was to posit an unknown
power. Sympathy was not so much an explanation as a mark of the
fact that an explanation was lacking. As Anne Moyer puts it: “a place-
holder, something of a way-​station on the way to an explanation.”58
Cudworth and More were aware of the objections to sympathy.
Cudworth vigorously insisted that it was demonstrable by experi-
ence, as did More, who repudiated the charge that to appeal to the
power of sympathy as a cause is “to take sanctuary in the Asylum of
Fools.”59 And in their defense, one should point out that both were
proposed as hypotheses, that is to say provisional explanations, not
definitive truths. There is no denying that the “baroque” complex-
ities of both hypotheses have lost the simple elegance of the system
which they are designed to replace. But there is also no denying that

5 8 Moyer, “Sympathy in the Renaissance,” 88.

59 More, Preface General xiv, in A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings.
 “Plastick Powers” and the Power of Sympathy 213

their attempt to formulate conceptions of power differently high-

lighted problems in Cartesian natural philosophy, but anticipated
later thinking on active powers.60 However, that history remains to
be written.

60 John Henry, “Occult Qualities and the Experimental Philosophy: Active Principles in Pre-​
Newtonian Matter Theory,” History of Science 24, no. 4 (1986): 335–​81; Hutton, “Re-​inventing the
Vegetable Soul.”