NEWTON

Kosmos – Bios – Logos

Irena Štěpánová

KAROLINUM

Newton
Kosmos – Bios – Logos

Irena Štěpánová

Reviewed by:
Stephen David Snobelen, Associate Professor, History of Science and Technology Programme, Director of Newton Project Canada

Published by Charles University in Prague
Karolinum Press
www.karolinum.cz
ebooks@karolinum.cz
Edited by Alena Jirsová
Cover by Jan Šerých
First English edition

© Charles University in Prague – Karolinum Press, 2014
© Irena Štěpanova, 2014

ISBN 978-80-246-2379-5
ISBN 978-80-246-2389-4 (pdf)
ISBN 978-80-246-3154-7 (ePub)
ISBN 978-80-246-3155-4 (Kindle)

Content

1. Cover Page

2. Title Page

3. Imprint

4. Content

5. Acknowledgements

6. I. Introduction

7. II. Sources of Newton’s Inspiration

1. The Hexameral literature and the Bible

2. Philo of Alexandria (15 B.C. – A.D. 50)

3. Ancient Egypt

4. Maimonides (1135–1204)

5. The Cambridge Platonists

6. Prisca sapientia

7. Corpus Hermeticum I.

8. III. Newton the Theologian and Historian

1. About Theology

2. Newton as a theologian of his times

3. Newton the Historian

9. IV. Newton the alchemist

1. Newton as an alchemist of his times

2. Summary of chapter IV

10. V. Newton – the natural philosopher (scientist)

1. De Gravitatione

2. Principia – Newton’s mature methodological approaches

3. Summary of Chapter V

11. VI. Analysis of the Scholium Generale

1. Previous Research on the Scholium Generale

2. Scholium Generale and Prisca Sapientia (Hermetic writings, Cudworth and Patrizi)

3. Summary of Chapter VI.

4. Corpus hermeticum II.

12. VII. Conclusions

13. Zusammenfassung

14. Literature

15. Appendix 1

16. Appendix 2

17. Appendix 3

Acknowledgements

I. Introduction

II. Sources of Newton’s Inspiration

The Hexameral literature and the Bible

Philo of Alexandria (15 B.C. – A.D. 50)

Ancient Egypt

Maimonides (1135–1204)

The Cambridge Platonists

Prisca sapientia

Corpus Hermeticum I.

III. Newton the Theologian and Historian

About Theology

Newton as a theologian of his times

Newton the Historian

IV. Newton the alchemist

Newton as an alchemist of his times

Summary of chapter IV

V. Newton – the natural philosopher (scientist)

De Gravitatione

Principia – Newton’s mature methodological approaches

Summary of Chapter V

VI. Analysis of the Scholium Generale

Previous Research on the Scholium Generale

Scholium Generale and Prisca Sapientia (Hermetic writings, Cudworth and Patrizi)

Summary of Chapter VI.

Corpus hermeticum II.

VII. Conclusions

Zusammenfassung

Literature

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

Appendix 3

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1. Cover Page

2. Begin Reading

3. Imprint

4. Content

5. Acknowledgments

Acknowledgements

My greatest thanks go to Zdenek F. Danes, whose help with the translation of my original text was crucial.

And I would also like to appreciate the three ladies, whose help was great: editors Alena Jirsová and Martina Pranic, and my daughter Petra.

I. Introduction

Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10 000 years ago. Isaac Newton [. . .] was the last wonderchild to whom the Magi could do sincere and appropriate homage.

John M. Keynes[1]

A belief that our comprehension of this world keeps increasing as if our heads were some endlessly inflatable balloons is common. However, the reality is different. Our knowledge resembles sedimentation: new information covers up old knowledge and pushes it into oblivion. While gaining new insights, we lose the wisdom of old. Certainly, some of that loss we may never regret: but the process of sedimentation may also obscure what should have been remembered. We thus may have lost a part of ourselves.

Fortunately, from time to time, and often after years of concentrated effort, we happily return to long-forgotten, even rejected, knowledge. A case in point is hermetic philosophy: not just as an example of “recurring” knowledge, but also as a record of gradual change of the overall frame of our learning, of our method, and, eventually, of our way of thinking. Hermetic philosophy (and alchemy as its practical part) represents an entirely different relation to natural world from what corresponds to our abstract rational approach. In fact, it seems to be an ideal topic to study the “history of ideas.”

The present book is a brief effort to show whether, and to what extent, hermetic philosophy may have inspired one of the founders of modern European science.

1 John Maynard Keynes: “Newton, the man,” in Essays and Sketches in Biography, New York: Meridian Books 1956, p. 280.

II. Sources of Newton’s Inspiration

Nemo suscipiet caelum; religiosus pro insano, inreligiosus putabitur prudens, furiosus fortis, pro bono habebitur pessimus [. . .] Haec et talis senectus ueniet mundi: irreligio, inordinatio, inrationabilitas bonorum omnium.

Asclepius, c. 2nd century.2

Wisdom has irretrievably succumbed to news reporting, shallow entertainment and demand. While the past all was (allegedly) rational and serious, now we are prisoners of reports. They float like dust and make existential appropriation of being – as the philosophers call it – impossible.

Petra Gümplová, 2007.3

In every age there were people who clearly saw that in the course of time the human spiritual level changes in a strange way: while knowledge naturally increases, spiritually mankind sinks ever lower. More than eighteen centuries separate the two quotations presented as the central pieces of this chapter, yet both say the same: in earlier times mankind was, spiritually, better off. It was closer to the mystical Beginning. And this idea, too, is characteristic for Isaac Newton: it haunted him.

For some time, it has been clear and generally accepted that Newton believed in prisca sapientia,4 that he frequently quoted authors from antiquity and that he – so to speak – felt that he was continuing in the antique priest-scientist tradition.5

We shall see that he saw himself more as a person who revives the half-forgotten antique wisdom than as a discoverer of entirely new ways of thinking. However, it has not yet occurred to anyone that Newton and his intellectual world literally derived from antiquity. Perhaps no one has yet seriously considered the possibility that the father of European science could have bypassed centuries of evolving European ideas and resumed an ancient line of thought. Nevertheless, we shall try to prove that modern science owes its beginning to Newton’s precise following of some thinking patterns that date precisely from ancient times.

Newton’s inspirations have been thoroughly studied by a number of authors; e.g. the prominent American scholar, Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, dedicates a substantial portion of her books on Newton-the-Alchemist to this very problem.6

For our purposes, we shall use those sources that may enrich present scholarship in Newtonian studies and open up new topics in them.

The Hexameral literature and the Bible

By Hexameral literature^7 we mean those texts that study the six days of creation according to the First Book of Moses, Genesis, Ch. 1, verses 1–27.8 Although that type of literature is of a very ancient date, starting with Origen around the middle of the 3rd century and ending with John Milton in the 17th century, in Newton’s time it was still a matter of interest.

The creation of the world according to the Bible is a mythical event, and, as such, has a timeless meaning: being a myth, it gives man a chance to think about himself and about his place in the world. Newton was certainly one of those who were fully aware that they have to deal with a truth of a higher order, which not only agrees with reality but also raises moral demands, and wields a great power, because it reaches beyond plain reason. Myth reaches all the way into the realm of values and emotions.9

In the 14th century, Henry von Langenstein wrote an influential book, Lecturae super Genesim,10 where he quotes sixty-four authors and their explanations of the creation of the world; the authors are not only Christian, but also pre-Christian, Arabic, Greek, Roman and Jewish writers. The Hexameral commentaries may be understood as the focus of the beginning of European science. Those studies always tried to find a common ground between Moses’ mythical concept of creation and the results of natural philosophy. Perhaps, with some exaggeration, we may claim that natural science gradually arose in the emancipation of Hexameral authors from the confines of Biblical exegesis.

Newton possessed a thorough knowledge of the Bible, and there is no doubt that, due to his profound religiousness, it was an important source of inspiration throughout his life. Here is an instance of Newton’s Hexameral commentary touching upon the actual duration of those six days of creation. Newton’s acuity is conspicuous:

You may make ye first day as long as you please & ye second day too if there was no diurnal motion till there was a terraqueous globe, that is till towards ye end of that days work.11

We think, moreover, that Hexameral literature influenced Newton’s methodology: his division of the world is based on Biblical Genesis, 1, 1–27.

The text describes the creation of the world in three steps. Three times the text uses the Hebrew word bara which, in the Old Testament, is exclusively reserved for Divine activity. We translate it as “create,” however, the Hebrew original has a profound meaning which we no longer recognize at the present time. Creation in the Hebrew meaning is far beyond human capability. Man always makes one thing out of another: divine Creation is something out of nothing. Not only that, God always made something absolutely new, something that existed never before and did not follow from anything that had been created earlier. Triple use of the word bara means that the world was made in three steps, the later and higher levels always being something absolutely, revolutionary new.

We thus reason that the division according to Genesis influenced the Newton’s methodological thinking and division of his work. We try to show it in the following table. Corresponding Biblical verses are in the left column. It helps to read the table from the left lower corner and read upward and toward the right side.12

The First Domain (starting from the bottom) is Nature without life. God is understood in His intelligent plan that seems to require an Intelligent Creator (the so-called Design Argument, see chapter V).

The Second Domain is the domain of Life. Since times immemorial, it was the subject matter of alchemy, which profoundly occupied Newton for a long time. We shall return to it in Chapter IV.

The Third Domain is the most mysterious. For the time being, we shall call it the Domain of the Logos.

The Greek word λoγoσ (logos) has several meanings: word, language, even idea.13 Originally, it meant a collection, an assembly of items that naturally fit together.

Gradually, its meaning was reduced to linguistic usage and it best fits our word “meaning.”

“Meaning” points toward “togetherness,” it is an interconnection of what meaningfully belongs together. We can express such a meaning only by means of language (again logos), a unique possession of man as God’s image.

Human language is the only means of comprehending the world and pointing toward its meaning. And language is in fact the only way to carry out this comprehending: it creates a web connecting all those individual events.14 Those events make up the essence of the world’s history.

We believe that Newton understood the Third Domain as the domain of history, where God and man cooperate as active partners. That is also a heritage of the Old Testament: history is a realm both human and divine. God and man work together in making history. More on that matter will follow in Chapter III.

Newton was not only a modern scientist: he also enjoyed solving the riddles so very popular in the Renaissance. We believe that it was the mystical event from Biblical Genesis and its commentary that directed his methodological conclusions in that field.

Philo of Alexandria (15 B.C. – A.D. 50)

Philo of Alexandria was a Greco-Jewish philosopher educated in the tradition of the Book of Wisdom. He was well-versed in the Old Testament as well as in Poseidonius, and made full use of that knowledge in his work.15 Today, he represents the mid-Platonic philosophy. Philo tried to join two mutually exclusive domains – philosophy and faith. This alone interested Newton^16 who, likewise, tried to combine the opposites in several disciplines. We are interested in his work, too, when we investigate the influence of emotional matters upon strictly rational thinking.

Such a joining of wide-ranging influences, typical for Philo’s times, is what we now call syncretism. Philo was the first who tried to transform the Hebrew legacy into a new doctrine similar to Greek philosophy. He is today known as an inventor of new method, called allegorical exegesis. Philo felt the pressure that the modern man knows quite well: how to retain one’s piety when rational criticism threatens the meaning of a sacred text.

Philo interpreted the texts allegorically in order to express their spiritual message. He tried to extend their meaning to encompass the wholeness of the world by means of interpretation, which in fact made up the translation between two cultural areas, Hebrew and Hellenic. It requires a conscious categorization of events into principles, and can be done only at the philosophical level of thinking.17

Although Philo tried to see God as a living entity, close to the Stoic interpretation, he simultaneously shared the Platonic resistance toward everything material.

Thus God fills everything and encompasses everything in His vital activity, yet He Himself cannot be comprehended: He is One and Everything (heis kai to pan; with the Neo-Platonists that term is transformed back into the neuter to hen kai pan).18

Philo finds that matter is the ultimate evil. Therefore his concept of God is purely transcendental.19 Although Philo had a considerable influence upon Newton, in this fundamental respect Newton departed from him. This will be shown in the analysis of Scholium generale in Chapter VI.

Philo is also connected with the origins of the Alexandrean Metaphysics of the Logos, which, unlike the classical metaphysics, is dynamic. It is therefore questionable whether it is metaphysics at all.

As a rule, European metaphysics studies unchangeable, transcendental principles beyond experience, and examines rational cases. On the other hand, mid-Platonic Philo investigates existence and comprehensibility. Those depend on movement, not on immobility.20

Ancient Egypt

The Old Testament describes Egypt as a place of utmost decadence, idolatry, zoophilia, superstition and all kind of abomination that may be overcome by nothing less than exodus and, eventually, by complete oblivion. In other words: it demands an active removal of all reminiscences.

This attitude prevailed in Christianity until the Renaissance, when the opinion changed dramatically. Egypt became a source of everything worthy that came later. It then became the true beginning of the spiritual evolution which advanced via the exodus and Judaism and progressed toward Christ and Christianity. And the 17th century turned the ideas about ancient Egypt into a complete Egyptomania, one that reached its climax in the time of the Enlightenment.21

Of course, Christian scholars could not immediately study Egypt, since, for the orthodoxy, Egypt was still the hated paganism incarnate. Such scholars could be accused of heresy and persecuted. But those Biblical scholars who wanted to study secrets of ancient Egypt without prejudice found a way around, due to their thorough knowledge of the Scriptures.

Scholars of Newton’s times protected themselves from possible persecution by a single verse from the New Testament, the Book of Acts of the Apostles 7,22.

Stephen the Martyr, in his farewell address before he was executed by stoning, said about Moses:

And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds.

In the entire Bible, that is the only favourable sentence about Egypt. In the sub-chapters about Spencer and Cudworth, we shall show how this single sentence opened the door for their unexpected and enormous intellectual achievements.

Maimonides (1135–1204)

The Jewish scholar Maimonides^22 (Rabi Moses ben Maimon) was the supreme authority for the Protestant scholars of the 17th century. With his ideas, more than five centuries old, he created a way out for their further studies.

At Cambridge, his ideas were taught by two prominent scholars:23 John Spencer (1630–1693), an expert on Hebrew, and Edward Pococke (1604–1692), expert on Hebrew and Arabic.24

In his library, Newton had several books by Maimonides,25 so that he had first-hand access to his ideas. Maimonides was also Newton’s main source for his study of Jewish history.26 Besides, he was indirectly exposed to his ideas, as will be shown in the next chapter.

Like the aforementioned Philo, Maimonides had to deal with the conflict between rationality and sacred Jewish texts. He came up with the idea that every one of the 613 commandments of the Torah must have had some rational purpose; and if we cannot find it, we have to look for a historical explanation. According to Maimonides, God creates human history in the same way as He created nature. There are no sudden breaks. Everything follows organically from what preceded: Natura non facit saltus – Nature does not take leaps. From one extreme to another, things progress through a series of infinitesimal small steps. Incidentally, this idea may have inspired Newton for his infinitesimal calculus as a mathematical method of studying infinitely small quantities and their changes.

According to Maimonides, divine wisdom is revealed in those continuous and infinitely small movements, gradual changes and natural growth. This was a very serious step: it was contrary to the traditional division of natural and revealed religion. According to Maimonides, even revelation is a natural historical process; and, likewise, natural phenomena are guided by God’s hand.

Maimonides was inspired by Manetho^27 and followed his concept of “normative inversion.” To this day, Manetho is one of our sources of information about ancient Egypt. He came up with the idea of a “counter-community,” an organized group of people who turn everything upside down. Whatever is mandatory in the original society, will be forbidden. And vice versa, whatever was forbidden, will be mandatory. This will in turn create something akin to “counter-laws.”28 Maimonides was not yet a historian in our sense of the word. His deductions may be called something like “historical apologetic theology.” Maimonides started from the known history of the Jews and literally invented, according to Manetho’s paradigm, their counter-society that worshipped everything that the Jews deplored, and forbade whatever the Jewish laws commanded.

Maimonides thus created the “Sabians,” a fictitious nation, shaped perhaps after the Persians. Nevertheless, Maimonides herewith prepared the field for later actual historians, who replaced the fictitious Sabians, spiritual opponents of the Jews, by a real nation, the Egyptians.

The Cambridge Platonists

The Cambridge Platonists were a group of professors at Cambridge University toward the end of the 17th century. Their philosophy may be approximately defined as a combination of Neo-Platonism with stoicism and other influences. Their predecessors are mainly Philo of Alexandria and Justus Lipsius. One of the principal ideas of the Stoics, pneuma, a fine, fiery, all-penetrating substance, later refined into the neo-platonic non-material aether, was a concept that, for a long time, also interested Newton. It opened for him a new approach to the concept of force. Unlike his contemporary mechanists, for whom all forces acted by direct physical contacts, Newton, by means of this aether, could explain actions at a distance.

Cambridge Platonists influenced not only Newton as a philosopher and physicist, but also Newton as a historian. It even impressed his concept of God.

Henry More (1614–1687)

Henry More is a more mystical, in fact theosophical, Cambridge Platonist. Later in life, he completely abandoned his strict Calvinist upbringing and devoted his life to the study of philosophy, mainly Neo-Platonic. It became his interest and perpetual joy for the rest of his life. More was highly productive and the brilliance of some of his early writings delights us to this day. We shall follow some of his ideas in Chapter V.

For instance: he used the term “spissitude,” density, to describe the power of the spiritual realm in a particular place. Similar to the dimensions of a body, he used the terms “ana/kata”.29

Newton owned several of his books,30 one with a dedication written in the author’s hand.

John Spencer (1630–1693)

John Spencer followed the ideas of Maimonides, but studied real history and found that the principle of normative inversion was hidden between the Jews and the Egyptians. He interpreted ingeniously the Sabians of Maimonides as pagans in general.31

He maintained a life-long interest in the ritual laws of the ancient Jews. It resulted in his book De Legibus Hebraeorum Ritualibus et Earum Rationibus. Newton owned a copy.32 He transferred the interest from the conflict of Judaism and Christianity to an older one of Israel and Egypt.

Thanks to Spencer, pagan religion became for the first time a subject of serious scholarly study. His book on Egyptian rites was one of the sources of the Egyptomania of the 17th century. Spencer’s actual knowledge of ancient Egypt became the precursors of modern religious studies and Egyptology despite the fact that he had to gather his information from Greek and Hellenic authors only. Spencer was a magnificent innovator. Unlike the earlier apologetic historical theology of Maimonides, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, Spencer’s is a real historical research. He compared the canonical tradition with archaeological, epigraphic (non-canonical) and linguistic discoveries.

Spencer managed to show – and he did not deny that he owes it to the thoughts of Maimonides – that the Jewish ritual laws are evidently based on a denial of a previous, older religion, i.e. the religion of ancient Egypt; and that they arise from those antagonistic forces and negative potential of two counter-religions. According to that idea, Moses did not create his laws out of thin air: he just transformed the original idolatrous commandments.

Spencer made use of Maimonides’ discovery that what we cannot achieve individually, we may accomplish as a society: we are capable of actively erasing collective memory. It was a great accomplishment. It meant that the only way to erase idolatry was a commandment of an exactly opposite rite to the common one.

Maimonides applied Manetho’s original idea of counter-community in the sphere of religion. And here Maimonides applied his construct of God’s cunning: The Jewish God dissolved the old rites by prescribing new, entirely opposite ones. That is the normative inversion of Maimonides. An example of this inversion is mentioned as far back as in Tacitus: the Jews sacrificed a lamb in fact to ridicule the supreme Egyptian god Amun, because the lamb was his sacred animal. Of course, God’s cunning was successful: the Sabians of Maimonides were long-forgotten; and ancient Egypt, too, was condemned for a long, long oblivion.

The trick about the memory is as follows: in order to erase a memory, it has to be overwritten by an active counter-memory, (“ars oblivionis”). Such a counter-memory may be artificially constructed, but was justified and legalized as God’s intention. The fact was that God was cunning, and that was the end of it.

Spencer surpassed Maimonides by reasoning several problems to the very end. For Maimonides, the Jewish law was timeless: once the law is valid, time is immaterial. On the other hand, Spencer saw the world through the eyes of a real historian: the law had its origin and, therefore, also an end. He was able to apply something that Maimonides was neither able, nor permitted to apply, i.e. the Christian evolutionism. When Spencer identified the origin of the laws of Torah as a defence against idolatry, he correctly reasoned that the Jews could have relaxed their rites when the danger to their true religion abetted and the rites lost their justification. According to the same reasoning, Spencer did not truly understand why the Jews had cursed our Saviour, who elevated love above the laws of Moses: the purpose of the law was after all to fight the danger of idolatry, and that danger was long gone. Spencer even brought adequate evidence that the true Egyptian zoolatry, at the time of Moses, was just an ancient history.

While Maimonides treated Revelation as a historical event and evidence of God’s cunning, Spencer elaborated the detailed mechanism of the event.

He established not only the fact that Jewish laws were a transformation of Egyptian laws: he interpreted the Revelation with constructs implantation, reception and transfer. According to Spencer, Revelation is a gradual action. It is included in the process of gradual adaptation, change of explanation and change of codification.

Incidentally, Newton did not agree with Spencer’s principal idea that Egypt was older than Israel. For him, Israel was the true original homeland, and the first revelation was given to Noah. For Newton, Egypt was just a decadence of the original revelation. It was only a temporary dwelling of the chosen people before their return to Palestine.

Spencer was only interested in rituals, not in theology; actual theology was studied in the same revolutionary manner by his colleague, Ralph Cudworth.

Ralph Cudworth (1617–1699)

Like John Spencer, Ralph Cudworth was one of the leading Hebraists at Cambridge University, and one of those scholars who were hiding from a potential persecution behind the aforementioned verse from the Acts of the Apostles. Thus they legitimized their historical research as theological scholarship, a search for Moses’ original sources.

Cudworth’s most important book is the voluminous The True Intellectual System of the Universe.33

Newton’s Out of Cudworth,34 i.e. handwritten notes on that book, shows how thoroughly Newton studied Cudworth’s ideas.35 We now have a transcript of those notes^36 they were published as an appendix to the book Essays on the Context, Nature and Influence of Isaac Newton’s Theology,37 we also have a brief description of the contents of those notes in the Newtonproject,38 in addition to some remarks by authors who had the opportunity to read those notes.

For instance, Danton B. Sailor wrote that four sheets of the manuscript were full of stains and their corners were bent, so Newton must have studied Cudworth’s entire True Intellectual System. He quotes a large number of passages verbatim, others he paraphrases, and only in a few places he adds his own commentaries.39 We mention these details because Cudworth’s book will be very important for our study of Newton’s opus.

Cudworth had unusually thorough knowledge of ancient authors and made good use of it. His principal intention in his True Intellectual System of the Universe was to combat the growing atheism and, by means of arguments, show that atheism is an error. He tried to show that the very functioning of the cosmos proves that the cosmos had to be designed by an intelligent God (design argument) and that the atheists, by their opinion, reveal in fact their intellectual inferiority.

However, Cudworth employed his knowledge and highly rational argumentation for an end that appeared foolish for more than three centuries. He tried to disprove the findings of another highly educated scholar and linguist, Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614), on the authenticity of the Corpus Hermeticum. Cudworth believed that this document described the original, ancient Egyptian religion.

We shall focus on this problem and its solution, because it will help us to understand Newton’s intellectual endeavour.40

Casaubon published his findings in 1614. He believed that his linguistic analysis definitely established that the texts of Corpus Hermeticum (C.H. hereafter) was written in koine Greek, a corrupt language; that they date from the 2nd to 3rd century; therefore it was impossible that they should authentically describe ancient Egyptian religion. Therefore, they were a fraud. According to Frances Yates, a recognized scholar, the year 1614 was a watershed. Assmann wrote:

According to Frances Yates, the year 1614 in which [Casaubon’s] book was published has to be recognized as a watershed separating the Renaissance world from the modern world . . . [but] . . . Yates closed the book on the Hermetic tradition much too early. It was because of Cudworth’s intervention and in Cudworth’s interpretation that the Hermetic texts continued to be influential in the eighteenth century.41

Assmann further says that this question of authenticity of C.H. could not be adequately solved until recently, because in the 17th century nobody could read the hieroglyphs. Therefore, it was impossible to decide whether the religion in C.H. is described correctly or not. It took 200 years from the publication of Casaubon’s book until 1822 when Jean-François Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphs, and another 200 years until the old Egyptian inscriptions were translated. Only at the present time can we decide with some confidence who was right; and the decision requires an Egyptologist. Therefore, only now can we also adequately judge Newton’s conviction about prisca sapientia and about the question whether he could, or could not, be its archpriest, whether he stood in its line, which starts at the very dawn of cultural history.

Cudworth was willing to agree with Casaubon that the texts of C.H. had been written in bad koine Greek. But he opposed him about their authenticity. He tried to show that at least some of them give a correct image of the ancient Egyptian religion. And the ancient Egyptian religion, similar to other religions of antiquity, was comprehended by Cudworth as follows: he used a large number of quotations from ancient authors to demonstrate that ancient civilizations worshiped many and various gods, but, at the same time, clearly recognized the existence of a supreme, non-created God.

Cudworth tried to reconstruct an old Egyptian theology in this way. That meant proving that besides the overt, exoteric religion for the common folk, who worshipped various gods and goddesses, the Egyptians knew a supreme God who did not have an exoteric cult; therefore, there existed an esoteric, secret theology for the initiated ones, an arcane theology.

He attempted to prove that the author of the hermetic texts, in his secret theology, was describing that One, Supreme and Universal God. This notion has not yet widespread: it is generally believed – undoubtedly under the influence of the Bible – that Egypt was the land of polytheism and that a true monotheism is tied to the Biblical religion only.

First, Cudworth presented a large anthology of Greek and Roman quotations from ancient authors, such as Origen, Climent of Alexandria, Plutarch, and several others, that clearly showed that ancient nations, besides an overt polytheism, did know a Supreme God.

He thus once and for all disproved the prejudice that it was only the Jews who in antiquity knew a Supreme God. Cudworth established that polytheism needs the existence of One, Supreme, Hidden God who penetrates all and holds everything together. He is the only one who can make this world function as a unity: one and everything, hen kai pan:

First, the intelligent Pagans worshipped the one supreme God under many several names, secondly, that besides this one God they worshipped also many gods, that were indeed inferior deities subordinate to him, thirdly, that that they worshipped both the supreme and inferior gods, in images, statues and symbols, sometimes abusively called also gods.42

By means of many quotations, Cudworth was able to prove that ancient nations clearly distinguished between a supreme, non-created God and a number of created gods; e.g., in Zoroastrism, Chaldeian religion and in Orphism, where we find the words hen kai pan for the first time.

For Cudworth, Egypt was the source of all wisdom. According to Egyptians, the world was a creation; not something that evolved spontaneously; that is documented by a series of Egyptian creation myths. There was thus a double Egyptian theology: one for the common people, vulgar, fabulous, and presented in events; and another, for the initiated, arcane and recognized, difficult, secret and hidden. And, for Cudworth, there were two ways to transfer the secret knowledge to future generations of the initiated ones: by allegorical myths and through the hieroglyphs.43

Cudworth searched all available antique documents and collected statements about a Supreme God. He found them in many authors. E.g., Plutarch mentions him in his treaty of Isis and Osiris. Horapollon calls God Pantokrator and Kosmokrator,44 an omnipotent being that, from the unknown, governs the entire world.

Eusebius talked about a spiritual entity, full of reason and wisdom, the one that had created the world and is hard to find, because He is dark and hidden. Manetho wrote that in the popular theology god Amun gradually accepted the place of the highest god, because his name meant hidden.45 According to Iamblichus, Amun is a demiurgic god and a representative of the highest truth. For Damascius, he is the principle, origin of all things and an invisible darkness.46

Cudworth saw ancient Egypt as follows: the supreme, hidden god, at first nameless, gradually fused with god Amun and thus received his exoteric cult. He also cleared this way a mysterious Greek inscription from the Egyptian city of Sais, recorded by Plutarch, here according to Cudworth’s English translation:

I am all that Hath bee,

Is, and Shall be,

and my Peplum or Veil,

no mortal hath ever yet uncovered.47

Here speaks a personal divine ego. It says that it is covered with a veil, the veil of the world. Such descriptions of the world, also found in C.H., will turn out to be highly important for Newton, once it becomes clear, what that veil of the world is made of.

Cudworth interprets that veil as the interface between the interior and the exterior; he agrees with Moses that man can see God, so to speak, from behind. He quotes Horapollon: “God is a spirit, removed from the world and streaming through all things from within.” And Cudworth therefore concluded: this was the First and Supreme God, “to hen to pan,” who contained all things.

We shall see that Newton, in his Scholium Generale adopted this formulation literally.

Cudworth’s research casts a new light on god Pan, the old Arcadian god of nature; from his name derives the word pantheism. Plutarch told us how sailors on open seas heard a mysterious voice calling “The great god Pan is dead!” Allegedly, it was the crying of ancient demons, fearing that their era was irretrievably gone due to the advent of Christus upon the throne of the Lord of the World.

In other words, at the end of Antiquity, divinity abandoned the world and entered a pure transcendence.

We may now say that Cudworth rescued the so-called natural theology, which expanded into deism: here, the ancient interpretation of the divine nature was revived under the assumption that nature is god. (Precise name of that philosophy should be deistic panentheism). Ever since the time of Plato and Aristotle, there has been a distinction between god and the world. However, for Egypt, god and nature were still united. God was an unconceivable space that contained all things:

The true and genuine Idea of God is general, is this, a Perfect Conscious Understanding Being (or Mind) Existing of itself from Eternity, and the Cause of all other things.48

After bringing a convincing number of quotations pertaining to the supreme god from a series of ancient authors, Cudworth quotes twenty-three passages from C.H. that, he believes, reveal the concept of the highest god in ancient Egypt. He quotes his own hymnic translations of parts of Greek originals of Chapters III, V, VIII, IX, XI, XII, XIII, XV, XVI and a Latin version of Asclepius, too.

Assmann says that, to this day, Cudworth’s translations are overwhelming (überwältigend).49 Their effect was a triumphal return of Hermes Trismegistus and his cosmotheistic (universal) religion. This Egyptian religion soon inspired the deists, free masons, modern Hermetics, the universalists as well as the whole Egyptomania of the 18th century, all the way to Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute and Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt.

Let us mention that Cudworth did not attempt to date the documents. He only tried to prove that C.H. truly describes the religion of ancient Egypt. He thus reserved the Hermetic tradition for future serious scholarly research.

Newton was likewise convinced that both Egyptian wisdom and monotheism were important in the ancient world. He says:

Egyptians excelled all other mortals in wisdome. P. 311 Herodot.50

This idea must have come to Newton from Cudworth, because had he followed other contemporary sources, he could not have arrived to such conclusions. Likewise, Newton’s conviction that the original religious truth, (prisca sapientia), revealed by God Himself, accepted by later cultures and transmitted further in a veil of symbols and allegory, was inspired by Cudworth. However, he used another expression, arcane theology, which was credited to Origen:

It hath been already observed out of Origen, that not only the Egyptians, but also the Syrians, Persians, Indians and other barbarian Pagans had, beside their vulgar theology, another more arcane and recondite one amongst their priests and learned men.51

For the sake of a correct understanding of concepts that Cudworth used and that we shall analyze, we now introduce two special chapters on ancient hermetic philosophy, its contents and its influence.

Prisca sapientia

We shall now pay attention to the so-called prisca sapientia or prisca theologia or prisca philosophia:52 ancient wisdom or theology or philosophy. We shall talk about the origin and spreading of this concept. It will be of utmost importance in our research.

In the year 1463, with the Byzantine scholars coming to the west, the so-called Texts of Hermes, in Latin Pimander (Poimandres), were brought from somewhere in Macedonia. They were collected on the table of Marsilio Ficino, together with original writings of ancient philosophers, such as Plato.53 Ficino was so impressed by those texts that he preferred to translate Pimander earlier than the authentic Plato.54 To him, it did not matter that the texts were written in bad and evidently recent Greek dialect, the koine. He was convinced that they were authentic and that they not only inform us about the old Egyptian religion, but that they were actual initiation texts.

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