‘Practical, Useful Learning’

Abstract

In June 1668, Meric Casaubon had just finished the first part of Of Credulity in Things Natural Civill and Divine (London, 1668), and went to spend some weeks at Cambridge. As he was talking, one day, with two University friends, there arrived at his door his fellow-prebendary, Peter du Moulin, bearing with him a book hot from the press, which, as Casaubon said, he ‘delivered with a smiling countenance … as though by it you hoped to stop my mouth for ever.’ (p.1)¹ The two friends had had frequent arguments about the merits of the new philosophy, and du Moulin now arrived triumphantly bearing its latest defence, Joseph Glanvill’s Plus Ultra, which he no doubt obtained shortly after its presentation to the Royal Society on June 18th.² Du Moulin was a warm supporter of the new philosophy (he was shortly to have his poem in praise of the Royal Society censored at Cambridge by Peter Gunning), and a friend of Robert Boyle in his capacity as tutor to the Boyle family.³ Casaubon and he argued at length that day, and after du Moulin’s departure, Casaubon began to compile an answer. By the middle of July it was either completed or well in hand, though it was not published until some time after, possibly at the end of the year, as A Letter to Peter du Moulin … Concerning Natural experimental Philosophie, and some books lately set out about it (Cambridge, 1669).⁴