Abstract
My paper explores the extent to which More’s ‘Spirit of Nature’ and Cudworth’s ‘Plastic Nature’ incorporated the functions of the Aristotelian vegetable soul, and how far, if at all, each was indebted to Aristotle. I argue that, although, on the matter of vegetable life there is some overlap between the functions of the Aristotelian vegetative soul and those ascribed by Cudworth to Plastic Nature and More to the Spirit of Nature, Cudworth and More were not simply reviving Aristotle in new dress. Both certainly drew on Aristotle when formulating their hypotheses, but these have a much broader range of functions than the Aristotelian vegetative soul. Even among those functions which concern the basics of organic life, both hypotheses have affinities with other the well-developed medico-physiological traditions of the late Renaissance. And, although this type of formative spirit is often compared to the Platonic World Soul, both hypotheses are indebted as much, if not more to Stoicism.
For the Root and Soul of every Vegetable is the Spirit of Nature;
(More, Immortality of the Soul, 401)
The Plastick and Vegetative Life of Nature, [is] the Lowest of all Lives
(Cudworth, True Intellectual System, 163)
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Notes
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Cudworth, True Intellectual System, p. 161.
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English translation by Alexander Jacob adjusted. This translation should always be checked against the Latin. An idiosyncracy of his edition is his re-arrangement of More’s chapters.
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John Ray concurs, rejecting the idea of an individual vegetative soul in plants because to account for the capacity of plants to propagate from cuttings, that soul would have to be divisible.
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Hutton, S. (2021). Re-inventing the Vegetable Soul? More’s Spirit of Nature and Cudworth’s Plastic Nature Reconsidered. In: Baldassarri, F., Blank, A. (eds) Vegetative Powers. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 234. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69709-9_17
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