1

OCCULTISM AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
© G. MacDonald Ross, 1983
Delivered at a conference of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, 1983.

1. The Neglect of Occult Influences on Philosophy

It is well known that the heroes of the seventeenth-century scientific revolution were
themselves by no means free of the occultist modes of thought from which they were
supposed to be rescuing the human mind. Far less attention has been paid to occult
tendencies in the philosophy of the time. [1] Since there was no sharp distinction
between philosopher and scientist in the seventeenth century, it would be most
surprising if the savant wearing his philosophical thinking-cap were somehow immune
from occult influences to which he was prone as a scientist. The main purpose of this
paper will be to suggest a few such influences. A secondary purpose will be to draw
some more general conclusions about the definability of occultism, and its demarcation
from philosophy and science.

One of the reasons why historians of philosophy have tended to overlook occult
influences is that there is much greater indeterminacy of interpretation in philosophy
than in science. [2] In the history of science, there used to be considerable ideological
prejudice against the very idea that occultism could co-exist with rational science in one
and the same mind, let alone be inextricably bound up with it. The prejudice eventually
receded in the face of overwhelming, unambiguous empirical evidence, such as the
Portsmouth collection of Newtonian manuscripts on alchemy and on the prisca
sapientia.[3] Philosophy, on the other hand, is too abstract for it to be generally
possible to pin down a philosopher’s meaning as unambiguously occultist. And the area
of potential contamination with occultism is precisely the area of greatest indeterminacy
in interpretation.

A further complication is that many non-philosophical beliefs intruding into a

philosopher’s writings can be interpreted as religious. For certain positivists,
anthropologists, and others, [4] this makes no difference, granted that metaphysics,
religion, and occultism are all equally meaningless superstitions anyway. For them, the
only demarcation which matters is that of all three from genuine science. Of course,
such an attitude cannot be shared by a religious historian of philosophy. Surprisingly,
perhaps, even atheist philosophers tend to treat religious beliefs with special respect.
They take off their hats when entering churches, and they allow religion to be
intellectually respectable when occult superstition is not. By piously labelling
extraneous beliefs as religious, historians of philosophy side-step the awkward issue of
demarcating metaphysics from superstition.

2. Occultism and Religion

I shall therefore start by considering certain problems over the demarcation between
philosophy and occultism which are subject to contamination by a religious dimension.
I shall discuss three topics in particular: disembodied spirits, embodied spirits, and
causality. First, that of disembodied spirits.

It is difficult enough to draw a line between religious and non-religious spirit beliefs in
twentieth-century England. Presumably angels belong to religion, fairies not. But what
 3

of ghosts? And even among religious people, an active belief in angels might seem
odder than a belief in the possibility of communicating with the souls of the departed.
In the seventeenth century, the categorisation of beliefs was very different. All
philosophers believed in angels, if only on Biblical authority. [5]

Conversely, on the same authority, any attempt to communicate with the dead
constituted the dreadful sin of necromancy. It was in any case generally considered
impossible for the spirits of the dead to return, or to communicate with us in any way.
The single exception was the miracle of Christ’s return after the resurrection. [6] The
Biblical report of the success of the Pythoness of Endor in summoning the soul of
Samuel for King Saul was frequently dismissed as a delusion. [7] Similarly, ghosts
were variously explained away as melancholic delusions, [8] as evil demons taking on
the shapes of the dead, [9] or as detached ‘astral bodies’ (the semi-material vehicles of
the now departed immortal souls). [10]

As for séances, the modern fashion is for summoning the spirits of the dead. In the
seventeenth century, mediums avoided such overt necromancy, and communicated
instead with angels, or with good fairies. [11] The distinction between the two was far
less significant than we might expect. The essential religious belief was that there were
all sorts of spiritual beings in Heaven and on Earth. It hardly mattered if one added
various ranks not explicitly mentioned in the Bible — the spirits and genii of Graeco-
Roman mythology, the celestial hierarchies of Cabalism and of Neoplatonism, or the
fairies and gnomes of folk-lore. Thus, Robert Boyle approved the project of the
Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle to provide empirical confirmation of Christian
spiritualism by assembling reported sightings of fairies, elves, and fauns in the
Highlands of Scotland. [12]

If we now turn to theories of embodied spirits, we find it no easier to put a finger on

what makes a belief superstitious rather than religious or philosophical. Descartes’
account of the soul is an excellent example of the conflicting ways in which a single
theory can be classified and evaluated. Most of his critics have accused him of
superstition, but on a variety of incompatible grounds. Ryle’s catch-phrase ‘the ghost in
the machine’ catches the spirit all right. [13] However, Ryle himself was only interested
in the logical mistake which led Descartes to postulate mental events and entities
underlying dispositional properties. He did not expand on the locus of the ghost in
Cartesian ontology.

Most twentieth-century dualists would approve of Descartes’ insistence on the absolute

immateriality of the soul, precisely because it raised dualism above the primitive
superstition of the soul as a quasi-material ghost trapped within the spatial confines of
the human body. If Descartes was superstitious, it was because he was not wholly
successful in escaping from the old modes of thought. In particular, he retained the
traditional belief in a tenuous spirit mediating between mind and body. [14] And though
he insisted on its strict materiality, this did not distinguish him from the majority of
occultists, who also treated spirits as consisting of a highly rarefied, and ghostly form of
matter. As for his mechanical explanations of mental events, they owed as much to
analogy and sheer invention as rival spiritualist accounts, such as those of the
Paracelsians.
 4

Materialists, on the other hand, commend Descartes for his attempt, however half-
baked, to explain mental functions in terms of the motions of small particles of matter
obeying the same mechanical laws as gross bodies. For them, his superstitiousness
consists in the pious retention of an occult, immaterial soul, which could have no
intelligible function in explaining the behaviour of the whole person. Although
Descartes himself probably saw the unity of thought and extension in Man as a religious
mystery, [15] he is often accused of inconsistently treating the soul as if it were a little
ghost sitting in the pineal gland, watching what was going on in the head, and magically
moving the gland from time to time. [16] Commentators like Kenny and Rée emphasise
the naivety of this position by labelling it the ‘homunculus concept’. [17]

Somewhere between the two extremes of dualist and materialist critics, Henry More
(1614–1687) complained, not about his belief in a spatially extended ghost inhabiting
the body, but precisely about the lack of it. For More, Descartes’ immaterial substance
existing nowhere was the ultimate occult entity. He insisted that spirits must occupy
space, and ridiculed Descartes’ version of immaterialism as nullibism, or ‘nowhereism’.
[18]

The third topic in which religion complicates the demarcation between occultism and
philosophy is that of causation. As long as attention is confined to extremes, there is a
clear enough contrast between the new, mechanistic philosophy, and occultism.
Mechanists believed that ultimately the only medium of causal interaction was pushing,
or impact between material bodies. Occultists believed in all sorts of interactions:
mutual attractions and repulsions (sympathies and antipathies); influences operating
immediately over a distance (those of the stars, or of magic spells); the effects of
incantations; purposeful, vital principles, and so on. Scholasticism fell somewhere
between the two extremes, with its final causes, substantial forms, and hidden ‘virtues’.

Mechanists got into considerable difficulties trying to explain attractive forces, such as
the cohesion of solids, gravitation, and magnetism, in terms of corpuscles pushing
against their neighbours. One can sympathise with Newton’s refusal to ‘invent
hypotheses’ about how gravitational forces were mediated. [19] On the other hand, one
can equally sympathise with Leibniz’s accusation that Newton was admitting occult
forces, by explaining gravitation as due to ‘gravitational forces’ operating immediately
at a distance, and knowable only by their effects. [20] We may now prefer the public
Newton who confined himself to finding mathematical formulae to describe the
phenomena — yet the private Newton was as convinced as Leibniz that there had to be
some underlying mechanism involving etherial particles. [21]

On the other side, many occultists went out of their way to translate magic powers into
strictly mechanist terms. The favourite medium for occult interaction was the World
Spirit transmitting the influences of individual spirits. By conceiving spirits as rarefied
matter, they obliterated any difference in kind between their World Spirit and the ether
of the mechanists. [22] Magic powers were thus brought into the same class as
attractive forces — given (or so it was believed) in experience, and explicable by a
supposed hidden mechanism.

Religion adds an extra dimension of complication. It had long been believed that
miraculous effects could be brought about in religious contexts: a priest’s words could
transform bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Christ, and holy water or saints’
 5

relics could cure the sick. More peripherally, the kings of England and of France were
believed to have the power of curing scrofula (the ‘King’s Evil’). [23] In England, at
least, the normal view was that this was a divine sacrament performed by God’s
annointed, rather than magic. The ceremony took place in the Royal Chapel, with a
priest officiating, and in accordance with a special form of prayer included in some
editions of the Book of Common Prayer. Further removed from the aegis of the Church
were other healers, such as the famous ‘stroker’ Valentine Greatrakes (1629-83). He
himself believed that God was working through him; but others attributed his powers to
diabolical agency, or to natural forces mediated by rarefied material effluences akin to
magnetism. [24]

Witches were in much the same category. The orthodox view was that their powers
were due to devils, and their existence was often cited as evidence for the spiritualist
world-view of Christianity (for example by Robert Boyle, Henry More and Joseph
Glanvill). [25] Conversely, others explained their powers in purely mechanistic terms.
In the seventeenth century, only a small minority believed either that their powers were
irreducibly magical, or that they were wholly delusory. [26]

Even archetypally occultist practices such as alchemy were given a strong religious
aura. No doubt, at one end of the spectrum, some alchemists carried out their
experiments without any thought of God except, perhaps, for a prayer at the beginning
of The Work. But equally, many a village wise-woman would charm away a wart
without worrying whether she was doing it with demonic assistance, with spiritual
effluences, or just doing it. More reflective alchemists were very concerned with the
theory of what they were doing. They generally believed that they had a special
understanding of the natures of things through divine illumination. It was this that
enabled them to see behind the appearances of things to their occult virtues, which they
could then manipulate. [27] At the other end of the spectrum, for example in the so-
called ‘Rosicrucian Manifestoes’, the actual practice of alchemy was even forbidden:
the extraction of gold from base metals was not to be understood as a physical process,
but as an allegory of the purification of the soul. [28] In effect, the way of alchemy was
little other than a fringe religion. Again, in any particular case it is far from clear
whether we have to do with practical technology, superstitious magic, mystical religion,
or some blend of all three.

There was a comparable ambiguity within religion itself. Most Protestants denied all
miracles: not only was the ‘Age of Miracles’ past, but no magical changes were brought
about in the Eucharist or other sacraments. [29] Even Catholics tended to go along with
the denial of religious magic, and to attribute any non-natural event directly to God
himself. However, this did not necessarily constitute any real limitation on the powers
of the priesthood. There is no practical difference between God’s granting a priest the
power to change wine into blood on uttering certain words, and himself bringing about
the change on the occasion of the utterance of those words. Indeed, an occasionalist
would have to say that there was no difference at all between the sacramental event, and
anything else that happened in nature. During the seventeenth century, a significant
body of philosophers, including Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza and Leibniz, came to
believe that there was no such thing as a real causal connection at all. All talk of
‘influence’ was equally superstitious. The only question was the ultimately theological
one of the principles by which God governed the evolution of the universe. So, Leibniz
in particular often phrased questions about what was natural or possible in overtly
 6

theological terms: would God create a universe which needed re-winding? Would God
create two identical atoms? [30]

The conclusion to be drawn from the above examples is that it is virtually impossible to
force any confrontation between occultism and the mechanical philosophy. When
challenged, occultists can easily dress up their beliefs either as essentially religious, or
as not different in kind from mechanist theories. At the same time, many religious
believers wanted to off-load religious magic, and at least some scientists wanted to
dismiss all supposedly natural influences as superstitious, and attribute everything
directly to God. The resultant conceptual chaos makes it difficult either to assert or
deny occult influences on the philosophy of the time. Yet there are other areas in which
at least the religious dimension is relatively subordinate.

3. Occultism and Philosophy

One way of showing the importance of occultist modes of thought in seventeenth-
century philosophy would be to take a range of writers who were all equally regarded as
philosophers at the time, and demonstrate that many of them were heavily influenced
by occultism. Such an approach would be a walk-over: for every unsuperstitious
philosopher such as Hobbes, Pascal, Descartes, Malebranche, Locke, Spinoza, or Bayle,
there is a Campanella, Fludd, Kircher, Comenius, Henry More, Cudworth, or F. M. van
Helmont. And whereas the first list is nearly exhaustive, the second is only a small,
random selection. However, the evidence would not persuade anyone who was not
already convinced of the importance of occult influences on philosophy. It would
immediately be countered by the denial that the writers in the second list were
philosophers at all.

A more effective strategy would be to take figures who are now still recognized as
genuine philosophers, such as Bacon and Leibniz, and show how their philosophies are
permeated with occultism. In particular, Leibniz’s system was deliberately intended as a
sort of highest common factor of mechanism and occultist vitalism. [31] Yet this too
would meet with the reply that, in so far as Leibniz’s thought is capable of
contamination by occultism, he is not really functioning as a philosopher: producing
theories about the world is not a proper part of philosophy.

I do not myself agree that philosophy should be defined so narrowly that there were
only half-a-dozen philosophers throughout the seventeenth century — and then only
part-timers. Nevertheless, in order to circumvent what one might call the
‘Thrasymachus gambit’, [32] I shall leave the obvious examples on one side. I shall
limit myself to more ambiguous cases in certain topics central to our philosophical
tradition: the theory of perception, primary qualities, the Cartesian cogito, what was
later known as the synthetic apriori, and empiricism.

Before the seventeenth century, the nature of visual perception was not a point at issue
between the occultist and scholastic philosophers. It was generally agreed that objects
emitted infinitesimal surfaces or effluences, often called ‘intentional species’, which
entered the body through the pupils of the eyes. On mingling with the spirit which
animated the body, they ended up as the sensory images immediately present to
consciousness. The main point at issue among scholastics was whether or not there was
also a simultaneous emission of a ‘visual stream’ searching out its objects. This was an
 7

essential element of Plato’s theory, intended to account both for the phenomenon of
projection, and for the observer-relativity of the objects of perception. [33] As for the
occultists, the visual stream theory was virtually essential for the conceptual grounding
of various superstitions, such as fascination, the evil eye, the influence of a mother’s
imagination on an unborn child (even Kepler, Gassendi and Descartes believed in this),
[34] and perhaps also the astrological influences of the intelligences governing the
heavenly bodies.

The early mechanist philosophers, such as Galileo and Descartes, took great pains to
explain the radical differences between their theories, and the effluences and visual
streams of their scholastic and occultist contemporaries. [35] Above all, they insisted on
an absolute dualism of appearance in the brain or mind of the observer, and the
qualitatively different reality of the object of perception; they explained all reality,
including whatever carried sensory information from object to observer, as consisting
of nothing but matter in motion; and they took it for granted that the mind was
fundamentally passive in perception.

Paradoxically, the new philosophers following the ‘way of ideas’ were even more
dependent than the occultists on hidden or occult entities. According to the traditional
theories, perceptible qualities were located in external objects themselves. Occultists
differed from the more sober scholastics in their stress on additional, occult qualities
underlying the surface ones. However, as Berkeley saw, the new dualism deprived
objects of all their surface qualities by locating them in the mind, so that reality itself
consisted entirely of hidden qualities known only to the philosopher or scientist. [36]
Therefore the mechanists of the seventeenth century had a considerable problem if they
wanted to maintain that they were different in kind from the magicians of old, and were
not simply the first generation of successful magicians. [37]

Some occultists exploited this weakness in the new philosophy. For example, John
Webster’s Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft attacked the view that witchcraft
provided evidence for the existence of evil spirits. For Webster, the new philosophy of
the Royal Society had shown how little could be known about the true causes of things;
consequently, there were no grounds for denying that witches were genuinely able to
tap hidden magical virtues. [38]

Locke, on the other hand, seems not to have noticed how little separated him from the
enthusiasts he so despised. He believed that we can only guess at the ‘real essences’ of
things. [39] Perhaps he assumed that his scepticism distanced him enough from the
occultists who thought they knew. But as it happens, occultists themselves prudently
avoided rash claims about the details of the hidden natures of things. Furthermore,
Locke made knowledge of essences only contingently unattainable, since angels could
become miraculously acquainted with them. [40] And what could happen miraculously
in a religious context, could conceivably be achieved magically in a secular one.

Locke did at least see that his empiricism gave him the problem of explaining how our
guesses about hidden essences could be meaningful. His solution was that, although our
ideas of secondary qualities give us no insight into the powers that cause them, our
ideas of primary ones are qualitatively identical with their archetypes, thus affording us
a conceptual bridgehead in reality itself. [41] Now, in view of Descartes’ sharp
distinction between real and perceived geometrical properties, [42] the casualness of
 8

Locke’s assumption might seem quite remarkable. It is less surprising, however, if we

bear in mind the survival of the traditional theories of perception. Locke himself admits
that he sometimes lapses into talking as if ideas and qualities were numerically as well
as qualitatively identical. [43] This tendency is reinforced by his frequently describing
perception in terms of ideas travelling from objects into the mind via the sense organs.
[44] In theory, his language should be taken as metaphorical; but in practice, it is a sign
that he was allowing himself to be seduced back into the magical imagery of the
effluence theory of perception, according to which our minds are fed with the very
qualities of objects themselves.

It might be claimed that the real differentia of mechanist accounts of perception (as
indeed of the mechanical philosophy in general) is preciseiy that they were mechanist,
and thereby closer to the truth than their rivals. However, although mechanics itself was
a strikingly successful piece of science, we should not close our eyes to the complete
arbitrariness and inadequacy of the various corpuscularian hypotheses thought up by the
mechanists. It is a hangover from Victorian prejudice to see theories as especially
virtuous simply because they happen to be couched in materialist, atomistic terms. If
the claim is diluted, so that the differentia becomes that of understanding the world in
mathematical terms, then it fails to differentiate the new philosophers from occultists
and Neopythagorean mystics such as John Dee and Kepler, [45] who also saw reality as
fundamentally mathematical. Ironically, in the seventeenth century itself, mathematics
was popularly regarded as one of the principal occult sciences. As Hobbes wrote in
Leviathan, ch.v: ‘Geometry [the most part of men] have thought Conjuring.’ [46]

Advances in the understanding of perception were due to developments in geometrical

optics that owed nothing to the replacement of visual streams and effluences by
corpuscles. The laws of linear perspective had been developed long before by thinkers
like Leonardo da Vinci, who was working within the framework of the older concepts.
[47] The theory that light consisted of cohorts of material corpuscles reflected from
surfaces differed little from the effluence theory, beyond making corpuscles colourless.
[48] Effluences and corpuscles were both on the interface between the material and the
immaterial, and they both gave rise to similar problems, such as why images were
invisible sideways on, and why there was no mutual interference when they crossed
paths. The alternative theory that light consisted of wave motions in a material ether
had its own difficulties. The corpuscular hypotheses were invented in order to satisfy an
ideological need to account for everything materialistically; but if anything they
hampered progress in scientific optics. It is far from obvious that the new philosophers’
wrong guesses about the nature of light should be regarded as of a different order of
rationality than those of their predecessors.

Corpuscularianism was not even fatal to the visual stream theory. Just as fascination
could be explained as an emission of rarefied matter, [49] so was there no reason in
principle why visual streams should not be accounted for in a similar way. The same
goes for other alleged phenomena, such as extra-sensory perception. John Wilkins, for
example, explained short-range ESP as due to material, magnetic effluences. Long-
range ESP, on the other hand, he attributed to the assistance of guardian angels, who
were capable of instantaneous communication without any material medium. [50]

This all goes to show that the availability of a corpuscular explanation is really
irrelevant to whether a belief is to be classed as superstitious or not. Thus, Robert Fludd
 9

(1574-1637) claimed that in a state of ecstasy, a ‘geomancer’ could emit mental rays
which would penetrate the macrocosm and return with warnings of the future. [51] This
belief would not deserve to be taken any more seriously if he had added that the rays
consisted of very fine material particles. Similarly, in the following century, Franz
Mesmer (1734-1815) tried to make hypnotism intellectually respectable by explaining it
as a form of magnetism. [52] Ironically, it is precisely his materialist explanation that
has dated.

There is an interesting and instructive twist to the changing fortunes of mechanist and
visual-stream theories of perception. The mechanists can fairly be criticised for
emptying the baby with the bath: they over-reacted against visual streams by refusing
the mind any active rô1e whatever in the process of perception. Kant’s theory of
constructive imagination was an important corrective. The irony is that some modern
magicians have seen Kant, and his follower Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as having
contributed towards the reinstatement of a magical world-view in which imagination
rivals science as a source of knowledge and power. [53]

I shall now move to what Descartes had to say about our knowledge of the hidden
reality underlying the perceptible qualities of things. Superficially, his approach is very
similar to Plato’s in its dependence on the magical principle that like is known by like.
For Descartes, the world is really only matter in motion. Particular motions are
represented by sensory images, which are themselves motions of spiritual matter in the
brain of the observer. General truths about extended substance are known by the
immaterial, rational soul. Such knowledge includes that of ‘first philosophy’ itself,
together with the sciences of geometry, mechanics, and physics.

In order to explain how the soul becomes acquainted with the essence of matter, Plato
had postulated an ante-natal acquaintance by contact. Descartes’ account owed much
more to the Christian tradition of mystical meditation, [54] and the related approaches
of intellectualist magicians and alchemists. Will-Erich Peuckert, a leading historian of
occultism, defines a magus as one who follows the ‘light of nature’, as contrasted with
the cabalist, who follows the ‘light of grace’. [55] If he is right, then the core of
Descartes’ philosophy is both magical and cabalistic. [56]

Having arrived at the indubitable proposition, ‘I am,’ Descartes appealed to the light of
nature in order to prove that the information carried in the idea of a perfect being could
not have come from himself. Just as the magus used the light of nature to read the
‘signatures’ of the macrocosm in the microcosm, so Descartes argued back from the
signature or idea of a perfect being which he discovered embedded in his own essence,
to the macrocosmic existence of that being. It was then by the grace of the non-
deceiving God that he was assured that his clear and distinct ideas (those unsullied by
perceptual imagery) corresponded to the archetypes on which God had modelled reality.
Descartes did not himself call the criterion of clear and distinct perception the ‘light of
grace’, but this is undoubtedly what he meant; and he was heavily criticised for
appealing to as subjective a criterion as that of any enthusiast. [57]

Around the time of his famous dreams, Descartes first heard about the Rosicrucians,
and tried to make contact with them in case they had forestalled him in the discovery of
the new wisdom. He was rapidly disillusioned. [58] On the other hand, the main thrust
of his epistemology is hardly distinguishable from that of the alchemist Oswald Croll,
 10

in the ‘Admonitory Preface’ to his Basilica Chymica. Croll also slates the sterility and
authoritarianism of university teaching, and commends the reader to turn inwards to
discover God, ‘the one Rector of that great university in the sky . . . Everyone learns by
going back to the source, and hence to God, who created knowledge for man . . . The
true route to true wisdom is the gnothi seauton of the Delphic Oracle . . . By starting
out from his own self, and understanding himself, Man can see and understand
everything in himself as in a sort of divine mirror . . . The notion of all things is born
with us . . . God is known by the light of nature . . . Man can derive most of his
knowledge of what he is from contemplation of himself ’ [59]

Neither sceptics nor empiricists should be surprised at Descartes’ using the conceptual
apparatus of magic and occultism to justify his rationalist epistemology. Both sorts of
philosopher deem it a superstition to suppose that human reason alone can attain non-
trivial knowledge of external reality. Locke (or at least the Locke of the first two books
of the Essay) saw himself as both sceptical, and what we now call empiricist. He
correctly diagnosed the crucial rôle played by innate ideas in justifying rationalist
claims to bridge the gulf between knower and known. Yet by Book IV, Locke had
himself lapsed back into comparable claims. Unlike philosophers such as Hobbes and
Leibniz, who reduced all logical truth to definitions, [60] Locke wanted to preserve a
contrast between ‘trifling’ verbal propositions, [61] and the real knowledge we had in
mathematics, ethics, and theology. He based it on intuitions of the ‘agreement’, and
‘disagreement’ or ‘repugnancy’ of ideas. [62] However, he could give no account of
what the intuition of agreement or disagreement consisted in, beyond appealing to the
usual metaphor of light. [63] It is no accident that the terms he chose were, in his day,
standard synonyms for the ‘sympathy’ and ‘antipathy’ of the occultists. [64] In the
context of the rest of his philosophy, any necessary connections between distinct ideas
had to be either non-existent or magical; and his choice of terminology is a tacit
admission of that fact.

Strict empiricism was in an even worse position than rationalism for avoiding
superstition, since it could provide no apriori criterion for judging between credible and
incredible reports of experience. This aspect of empiricism would have been more
evident in the seventeenth century than now, since it is only since the nineteenth
century that the term ‘empirical’ has acquired its present, commendatory sense.
Previously it meant only ‘anti-scientific’, or ‘quack’, as in the expression ‘empirical
remedy’. [65] In antiquity, the empirical school of medicine rejected all forms of
treatment based on theory, and confined itself to what had been found successful in
practice. Consequently, the empirical doctor did not differ in kind from the village
wise-woman, or witch. Broadened into a general, sceptical philosophy (as with Sextus
the Empiric), [66] empiricism had no basis for excluding generally accepted beliefs
about occult phenomena. Certainly some empiricists were less credulous than others;
but this was more a question of temperament than of theoretical stance. It is therefore
hardly surprising that there should be as much superstition in the Sylva sylvarum of
Francis Bacon, the so-called father of modern empiricism, as there is in the Magia
naturalis of the occultist della Porta, and rather more evidence of practical
experimentation in the latter. [67]

4. The Rhetoric of the Occult

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The examples that I have given, and others that could be adduced, show that in the
seventeenth century there was no clear line of demarcation between occultism,
philosophy, religion, and science. Over large areas of belief, it simply was not the case
that the modern philosophers had a monopoly of truth, meaningfulness, evidence,
reasonableness, or even of a rational scheme of concepts. It would be possible to cobble
together some sort of a definition of occultist as opposed to rational philosophy, by
taking extreme examples, and setting up contrasting paradigms in terms of families of
overlapping characteristics. However, such a descriptive procedure would have limited
value. It would be tied to a particular historical period and culture, and it would be
incapable of clarifying either the area of overlap between superstition and rationality, or
the process of conceptual change.

Rather than trying to understand the contrast merely through characteristics internal to
the belief-systems themselves, it is necessary to take into account an additional,
intentional dimension, namely the perceived relation between the occult philosopher
himself, and orthodoxy. [68] The position of the occultist is closely analogous to that of
the heretic, whose status depends as much on the fact of his being branded as a religious
deviant, as on what he actually happens to believe. The occultist is essentially an
intellectual deviant. So in order to understand the contrast between occultism and
orthodoxy, we have to take into account not merely its internal logic, but also the
rhetoric of the labels.

As a deviant, the occultist is faced with three possible strategies: he can go

underground, [69] he can protest his innocence, or he can embrace the label.[70] During
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the occult sciences were practised in relative
secrecy, if only out of fear of religious or secular persecution. By the seventeenth
century, however, the accelerating collapse in respect for the authority of the Church
and the universities allowed advocates of occultism an unprecedented freedom of
thought. For a while, many occultists saw themselves as a legitimate wing of the
intellectual revolution against the scholastic establishment. [71] As experimentalism
and mechanism gradually took root, a significant body of occultists tried to make their
beliefs intellectually respectable by formulating them in corpuscularian terms, and by
trying to verify them experimentally. [72] Then, as now, occultists were often at least as
meticulous about their experimental methodology as orthodox scientists. [73]

At the same time, others willingly described their own philosophy as ‘occult’, and
positively gloried in anti-rationalism and anti-materialism. When the resurgence of
occultism was at its height, at around the middle of the century, it was far from clear
what the orthodoxy of the future was going to be: it could have been represented by
vitalist physics, astrology, Hermetic medicine, and alchemy. [74] Only towards the end
of the century did it become evident that mechanism had replaced scholasticism as the
new orthodoxy.

An integral part of the process of establishing the new orthodoxy was a rigid defining
of its borders with religion and superstition, and the ruthless purging of all occult
tendencies. For the first time in nearly a century, it was clearly decidable what was to
count as irrational belief. The immediate consequence was that the survivors of extreme
occultism had once more either to go underground, or to identify themselves openly as
committed opponents of philosophy and science rather than as fellow-travellers. This is
precisely what we find at the beginning of the eighteenth century, with the emergence
 12

of consciously anti-rational occult societies, such as Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism,

and of anti-scientific romanticism. [75]

An excellent illustration of the changing climate is provided by Leibniz’s attitude to

alchemy. [76] In his youth (in the 1660s), Leibniz was heavily involved in alchemy: his
first job was as secretary to a society of alchemists at Nuremberg, he participated in a
number of gold-making enterprises (though, unlike Newton, he seems to have done no
actual laboratory work), and he probably owed his posts at Mainz and Hanover to his
reputation as an adept. He maintained at least a casual interest in alchemy for the rest of
the century. It is quite possible that he deliberately destroyed documentary evidence of
his activities at Nuremberg, and he certainly lied to his biographer about how he felt
when he was young. In his early days, there was the single art known indiscriminately
as ‘alchemy’, or ‘chemistry’. By the time he was an old man, chemistry was an
established science, and alchemy an outmoded and shameful superstition. [77]

Just as the term ‘alchemist’ had acquired a pejorative sense, so a whole range of beliefs
became defined as beyond the pale for a serious philosopher or scientist. [78] All the
same, the concept of deviance by itself no more provides an adequate line of
demarcation between orthodox and occult sciences than a purely internalist criterion.
There are many forms of intellectual deviance which have nothing to do with occultism
or superstition. Yet it is possible to identify a group of ‘occultist’ attitudes and
concepts, often clustered around particular ancient and mediaeval texts, which have
historically tended to remain on the fringes of the intellectual world. Internalist
historians would say that occultism has inevitably remained underground because it is
objectively antipathetical to rational thought and successful science. Others would
explain its ostracism as resulting from the anti-authoritarianism implicit in its stress on
individual enlightenment. But such questions cannot sensibly be discussed without
involving live philosophical controversies about the nature of rationality itself.

My historical conclusion is that the concept of occultism is of little use when there is no
well-defined orthodoxy for it to deviate from. In a period of transition and intellectual
ferment, the widespread mingling of different approaches robs the term of much of its
meaning. As far as the seventeenth century is concerned, its most valuable use is the
negative one of reminding the historian that it was above all a century in which
philosophy and science cannot be sharply demarcated from the occult.

FOOTNOTES
1. I treat the occultist background to seventeenth-century philosophy much more fully in my
chapter: ,Okkulte Strömungen im 17. Jahrhundert,’ in Ueberwegs Grundriss der Geschichte
der Philosophie, Series V, Part 1, ed. J.-P. Schobinger (Basel: Schwabe, 1998), 196–224.

2. In the present paper, I have space only to interpret seventeenth-century philosophers, not to
discuss the very difficult and important problems about the theory of interpretation — in
particular the challenges raised by Donald Davidson in his ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual
Scheme’, in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association 47 (1973–4) 5–20. I say
something about them in my paper, ‘Angels’, Philosophy 60, 1985, 499–515. Space also
prevents me from discussing how we should transcend the limitations of the by now familiar
distinction between ‘internalist’ and ‘externalist’ explanations. See, for example, J.R. Ravetz,
‘Francis Bacon and the Reform of Philosophy’, in Science, Medicine and Society in the
Renaissance, ed. A.G. Debus, Vol. II (London, 1972), 97–119, esp. pp.97–8; J.R.R. Christie &
 13

J.V. Golinski, ‘The Spreading of the Word: New Directions in the Historiography of Chemistry
1600–1800’, in History of Science, 20 (1982) 235–266, esp. pp.235–7. Nor can I go into the
fascinating question of why Anglo-Saxon historians of philosophy have tended to confine
themselves to internalist history (‘why’ both in the sense of understanding their rationale, and
of placing their internalism in the context of philosophy as a social institution). See David
Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery (London, 1976), Chapter 1.

3. cf. Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy (Cambridge, 1975).

4. For example, A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (London, 1936); Bronislaw
Malinowski, ‘Magic, Science and Religion’ (1925), reprinted in Magic, Science and Religion
and Other Essays (New York, 1954) 17–92.

5. Most sceptical are Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. xxxiv, and Spinoza, Cogitata metaphysica, in
Opera, ed. C. Gebhardt (Heidelberg, 1924–6), I. 275.

6. For example, Marin Mersenne, Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim (Paris, 1623) 583ff.
And even if necromancy were possible, it was still a sin: Leviticus xix.3, xx.27; Deuteronomy,
xviii.10-11.

7. For example, John Webster, The Displaying of Supposed Witchcraft (London, 1677) 165.
Webster also criticises the Authorized Version for referring to her as the ‘witch’ of Endor in the
headings to I. Samuel xviii. The translators may well have been influenced by King James’s
having called her a witch in his Daemonologie (Edinburgh, 1597) 29.

8. For example, Reginald Scot, Treatise upon the Nature and Substance of Spirits and Divels,
etc. (London, 1584), Ch. xxxii.

9. For example, King James, op. cit., (n.7) 61, 95.; Johann Heinrich Decker, Spectrologia
(Hamburg, 1690), 145ff.

10. For example, John Webster, op. cit. (n.7) 311–320.

11. For example, Méric Casaubon, A True and Faithful Relation of . . . Dr. John Dee . . . and
some Spirits (London, 1659), and William Lilly, History of his Life and Times, from the Year
1602–1684, Written by himself, ed. Elias Ashmole (London, 1715), reprinted as The Last [sic!]
of the Astrologers, ed. K.M. Briggs (London, 1974).

12. Robert Kirk, The Secret Commonwealth, ed. S.F. Sanderson (Cambridge & Totowa, 1976).
Cf. Robert Boyle, Works, ed. T. Birch (London, 1744), Vol. I (Life, &c.) 119–130.

13. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London, 1949) 15.

14. A good example of Descartes’ fudging of the problem of interaction between thought and
extension is to be found in his First Thoughts on the Generation of Animals (Adam & Tannery,
XI. 518–9), where he talks as if spirits were such that only an infinitesimal force is needed to
deflect them — in other words, they are exactly on the interface between the material and the
immaterial.

15. This is how I take his remarks to Princess Elizabeth: Adam & Tannery, Vol. III, esp.
pp.665–6, 691–3.

16. Not only materialists have made this point. It is expressed very sharply by Leibniz in the
Theodicy, Part 1, §§60–61. Leibniz’s diagnosis of Descartes’ mistake as due to a defective
formulation of the laws of motion is not only a very perceptive piece of historical
 14

reconstruction, but a shining example of sympathetic historiography. It is, however, just

possible that Descartes was more explicit in lost MSS studied by Leibniz when in Paris.

17. A.J.P. Kenny, ‘The Homunculus Fallacy’, in Interpretations of Life and Mind, ed. M.
Grene (London, 1972) 65–74; Jonathan Rée, Descartes (London, 1974) 63–4, 121–3.

18. Henry More, Enchyridion metaphysicum (London, 1671) I. 27.

19. Principia, 3rd Edn. (London, 1726) 530.

20. This is a Leibnizian commonplace. See, for example, the Preface to the Nouveaux Essais,
Academy edition (VI.6), ed. Robinet & Schepers, pp.645. His comments on occult qualities on
p.68 are identical in spirit with Molière’s joke in the 3rd Interlude of Le Malade Imaginaire
(1673): “BACHELIERUS: ‘Mihi a docto doctore / Domandatur causam et rationem quare /
Opium facit dormire. / A quoi respondeo, / Quia est in eo / Virtus dormitiva, / Cujus est
natura / Sensus assoupire.’”

21. Opticks, Bk.III, Pt.i., Qn.3, ad fin. (Dover Edn., 1979) 401; letter to Bentley of
25.2.1692/3, in Four Letters from Sir Isaac Newton to Doctor Bentley (London, 1756) 23–32,
reprinted in Isaac Newton’s Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy, ed. I. Bernard Cohen
(Cambridge, 1958) 300–309.

22. Marielene Putscher, Pneuma, Spiritus, Geist. Vorstellungen vom Lebensantreib in ihnen
geschichtlichen Wandlungen (Wiesbaden, 1973).

23. Helen Farquhar, ‘Royal Charities. Touchpieces for the King’s Evil’, in The British
Numismatics Journal 12 (1916) 39–135; 13 (1917) 95–163; 14 (1918) 89–120; 15 (1919) 141–
184; Marc Bloch, Les Rois Thaumaturges (Strasbourg, 1924); Keith Thomas, Religion and the
Decline of Magic (Harmondsworth, 1978) 227–244; G. MacDonald Ross, ‘The Royal Touch
and the Book of Common Prayer’, in Notes and Queries 30, 1983, 433–435.

24. Valentine Greatrakes, A Brief Account of Mr. Valentine Greatrak’s, and divers of the
strange Cures by him (London, 1666); Henry Stubbe, The Miraculous Conformist (Oxford,
1666); Joseph Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus (London, 1681) Pt. I, pp.90ff.; Pt. II, p.247;
Robert Boyle, Works, ed. T. Birch (London, 1744) Vol. I (Life, &c.) pp.45–53; Anne Conway,
Conway Letters. The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More and their
Friends, 1642-8, ed. M.H. Nicolson (London, 1930) 244–275.

25. For example, Henry More, An Antidote against Atheisme (London, 1653); Joseph Glanvill,
op. cit. (n.24).

26. For the seventeenth century, the important contrast was between ‘natural’ and ‘demonic’
magic. Boyle, More, and Glanvill were among those who insisted on the reality of demonic
magic. Among those who explained witchcraft away as at most natural magic were Johann
Wier, De praestigiis daemonum et incantationibus et veneficiis (Basel, 1563); Reginald Scot,
op. cit. (n.8); Tobias Tandler, Dissertationes physicae-medicae (Wittenberg, 1613); Thomas
Ady, A Candle in the Dark (London, 1656); John Wagstaffe, The Question of Witchcraft
debated; or a discourse against their Opinion that affirm Witches (London, 1669); and John
Webster, op. cit. (n.7). It is one of the theses of this paper that what was intentionally dubbed
‘natural magic’ cannot be straightforwardly divided into the ‘natural’ and the ‘magical’. In so
far as such a division can be made, Webster is probably on the magical side: assuming (with the
Dictionary of National Biography) that he was identical with the author of Academiarum
examen (London, 1654), he was described by Thomas Hall, in his Vindiciae literarum (London,
1654), 199, as belonging to the ‘Familiastical-Levelling-Magicall temper’. Cf. P.M. Rattansi,
‘Paracelsus and the Puritan Revolution’, in Ambix 11 (1963) 24–32, esp. p.29.
 15

27. The variety of approaches to alchemy is reflected in modern interpretations. At one extreme
alchemy is seen primarily as the matrix of modern technology (e.g. Robert Multhauf, The
Origins of Chemistry [London, 1966]), at the other, primarily as mystical and symbolic (e.g.
C.G. Jung, Psychologie und Alchemie [Zurich, 1944]). Most other historians fall between these
two extremes. An alternative emphasis on the rhetorical and didactic dimensions is given by
Owen Hannaway’s The Chemists and the Word (Baltimore & London, 1975).

28. Allgemeine und General Reformation der gantzen weiten Welt. Beneben der Fama
Fraternitatis, dess Löblichen Ordens des Rosenkreutzes (Cassel, 1614). Cf. Will-Erich
Peuckert, Die Rosenkreutzer (Jena, 1928); Paul Arnold, Histoire des Rose-Croix et les origines
de la Franc-Maçonnerie (Paris, 1955); Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment
(London, 1972), and my review-article, ‘Rosicrucianism and the English Connection’, in
Studia Leibnitiana 5 (1973) 239–245.

29. A typical Protestant attack on the magic of Catholicism was that of Jean-Baptiste Thiers,
Traité des superstitions (Paris, 1679); and there is much of the same throughout Hobbes’s
Leviathan. Cf. also Thomas, op. cit. (n.23), ch. 2. Note also Descartes’ attempt to demystify
transubstantiation by explaining it in materialistic terms: Replies to Objections IV, sub fin.

30. This tendency is particularly evident throughout the correspondence with Clarke.

31. 1 expand on this theme in my Past Masters: Leibniz (Oxford, OUP, 1984). For Bacon, see
Paolo Rossi, Francesco Bacone: Dalla Magia alla Scienzia (Bari, 1957), translated by S.
Rabinovitch as Francis Bacon, From Magic to Science (London, 1968); and J.R. Ravetz, op.
cit. (n. 2).

32. I refer, of course, to Thrasymachus’s ploy in reply to Socrates’s point that rulers sometimes
make mistakes (Republic, Bk. I.).

33. A singularly clear account of the contemporary state of play is to be found in Francesco
Suárez, De anima III.ii, xvii, in Opera omnia, ed. André & Berton (Paris, 1856–61) III.525–6,
670–3. Plato’s theory is expounded in Theaetetus 156A–E, Timaeus 45B–46C.

34. On fascination in general, see Daniel Sennert, Medicina practica VI.9, in Opera (Paris,
1641); Johann Christian Frommann, Tractatus de fascinatione novus et singularis in quo
fascinatio vulgaris profligatur, naturalis confirmatur, et magica examinatur (Nuremberg,
1675); and the otherwise markedly anti-occultist Etienne Chauvin, Lexicon rationale, sive
thesaurus philosophicus, s.v. ‘fascinatio’ [ff. Ff recto to Ff2 verso]. Bacon, on the other hand,
attributed any genuine cases to demonic agency: Sylva sylvarum, Cent.10, §950. Belief in the
influence of imagination on the foetus seems to derive from Avicenna and Algazel: Lynn
Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science VII (New York, 1958) 476. Cf.
Johannes Kepler, Opera omnia, ed. C. Frisch (Frankfurt & Erlangen, 1858–71) II.726, V.263;
Descartes, Traité de l’homme, Adam & Tannery, XI.176; Pierre Gassendi, De phantasia, in
Opera, ed. Habert de Montmor & Henri (Lyons, 1658) II.424.

35. See in particular, Galileo, Il saggiatore (Rome, 1623) 196–9 [The Assayer, tr. S. Drake
(New York, 1957) 273ff.]; Descartes, Traité de la lumière, Ch.1: ‘Of the difference between
our sensations and the things that produce them’, in Adam & Tannery, XI.3–6.

36. Berkeley diagnosed Locke’s failure to see the absurdity of his position as due to his belief
in the ‘wonderful [= magical?] faculty’ of abstracting ideas: Principles, Introduction, §10.
Leibniz avoided the problem in the first instance by claiming that ideas of secondary qualities
were really confused perceptions of secondary ones: Nouveaux essais, II.viii.11–21. But
ultimately his solution was an almost Berkeleian phenomenalism: see my ‘Leibniz’s
 16

Phenomenalism and the Construction of Matter’, in G.-W.-Leibniz-Gesellschaft, Leibniz’

Dymanica (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1984) 26–36.

37. I suspect hidden dimensions to the irony of J.M. Keynes’s description of Newton as ‘the
last of the magicians’: cf. ‘Newton, the Man’, in The Royal Society: Newton Tercentenary
Celebrations (Cambridge, 1947) 27–34, esp. p.29.

38. Webster, op. cit. (n.26), pp.17, 267–70.

39. e.g. Essay, IV.iii.24. Strictly, ‘we cannot so much as guess’!

40. e.g. Essay, II.xxiii.13; IV.iii.6, ad fin.

41. e.g. Essay, II.viii.15; xxx.2.

42. cf. the example of the wax in Med. 2, and of the sun in Med. 3.

43. Essay, II.viii.8: ‘Which ideas, if I speak of sometimes as in the things themselves, I would
be understood to mean those qualities in the objects which produce them in us.’ I am aware that
some commentators have interpreted this sentence differently.

44. e.g. Essay, I.i.15; II.ii.1; iii.1; ix.15; xi.17.

45. e.g. John Dee, Monas hieroglyphica (Antwerp, 1564), repr. in Ambix XII (1964) 112–221;
Johannes Kepler, Mysterium cosmographicum (1596).

46. Cf. Thomas, op. cit. (n.23), pp.426–7, 430–1.

47. Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks, ed. Ed. MacCurdy (London, 1938), II.363–380.

48. Gassendi, for example, insisted that ‘species, i.e. images emanating from bodies’ were
material: Epistle II De apparente magnitudine solis humilis et sublimis §5, in Opera (Lyons,
1658) III.425.

49. Cf. n.34, above.

50. John Wilkins, Mercury, Or the Secret and Swift Messenger, shewing how a Man may with
privacy and speed communicate his Thoughts to a Friend at any distance (London, 1641) 118–
22, 148.

51. Robert Fludd, Tractatus de geomantia, pp.3–70 of Fasciculus geomanticus, in quo varia
variorum opera geomantica continentur (Verona, 1687).

52. Franz Mesmer, Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal (Geneva, 1779).

53. Gareth Knight, A History of White Magic (London & Oxford, 1978) Ch.1.

54. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the important similarities between Descartes’
Meditations, and Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. In my view, they are still understated
by Pierre Mesnard, ‘L’arbre de la sagesse’, Cahiers de Royaumont, Philosophie, No. II (Paris,
1957). Cf. esp. Versio vulgata, ed. Calveras & Dalmases (Rome, 1969) 140, 160, 172. On the
other hand, however close the analogies, it remains the case that the principal purpose, of
Descartes’ Meditations is the discovery of natural science rather than wisdom. This puts him
firmly in the camp of occultist enthusiasts as contrasted with religious mystics.
 17

55. Pansophie: Part 2: Gabalia, Ein Versuch zur Geschichte der magia naturalis im 16. bis 18.
Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1967) 20.

56. There is another demarcation problem between mysticism, heresy, and cabalism. One way
of taking Descartes’ Meditations is to see him as discovering his being as a mode of the
substance Thought. But how is unlimited, infinite Thought to be distinguished from God
himself? Since his introspection discovers the concept/essence/being of God embedded in his
very thinking, how is he not himself identical with, or at least part of, God? That would be the
Heresy of the Free Spirit, which developed in Holland as an off-shoot of the mysticism of
Meister Eckhart. Cf. Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages
(Berkeley, 1972). No wonder most of the proof of God’s existence in Med. III is really a proof
that Descartes is not God! As for Cabalism, it is perhaps not just a coincidence that Descartes
repeats the phrase ‘Ego sum’ almost as a meditational mantra – and EGO SUM is one of the
names of God (Exodus iii.14). Perhaps instead of the slogan, cogito ergo sum, which does not
occur in the Meditations anyway, we should substitute the slogan: Dubito, ergo non sum Deus.

57. e.g. Leibniz, Philosophischen Schriften IV, ed. Gerhard (Berlin, 1880) 328.

58. Adrien Baillet, La vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes (Paris, 1691) I.87ff. See also Henri Gouhier,
Les premières pensées de Descartes (Paris, 1958) 117–141; Arnold, op. cit. (n.28) 273–299.
Modern historians have correctly nailed the many myths about Descartes, such as his
membership of the Rosicrucian brotherhood, and his discovery of the secret of prolonging life,
as in Gabriel Daniel, Voiage du monde de Descartes (Paris, 1690) 45ff.: ‘Que M. Descartes
n’est pas mort.’ On the other hand, it is an important historical fact about how Descartes was
perceived by his contemporaries that such myths could have arisen. For other suggestions of
Cartesian occultism, cf. Ravetz, op. cit. (n.2) 99–100, and Westfall, ibid., 186–7. It is also
worth adding that the concept of an evil genius, while fanciful to us, would have seemed quite
commonplace in the spiritualist climate of the seventeenth century.

59. Oswald Croll, Basilica chymica (Frankfurt, 1609) 13, 26–7: ‘Supremae universitatis unicus
Rector [translated by H. Pinnell, Philosophy Reformed and Improved (London, 1657) 23, as
‘the One onely Governour of the supream Universe’] . . . Omnes per retrogressionem discunt a
primo, et hic a Deo, qui ei scientiam creavit . . . gnothi seauton . . . vera via (secundum
Apollinis Delphici oraculum . . .) ad veram Sapientiam . . . a se ipso primum exordiri: sic quod
Homo intelligens se ipsum, in seipso, tanquam in quodam Deifico Speculo intueatur . . .
concreata est nobis omnibus Rerum Notio . . . Lumine Naturae . . . cognoscitur Deus . . . et
potest Homo bonam, magnamque partem cognitionis eius Qui est, ex sui ipsius consideratione
venari . . .’

60. It could be argued that the belief that conceptual analysis can uncover new truths about
reality is as superstitious as any other epistemology. From this point of view, Leibniz is very
much in the tradition of Lullian mysticism.

61 Essay, IV.viii.

62. Essay, IV.i.2, &c.

63. Essay, IV.ii.1: ‘This part of knowledge is irresistible and, like bright sunshine, forces itself
immediately to be perceived, as soon as ever the mind turns its view that way; and leaves no
room for hesitation, doubt, or examination, but the mind is presently filled with the clear light
of it.’

64. Cf. the English translation of della Porta’s Magia naturalis: Natural Magick (London,
1658) [repr., New York, 1957] Bk.I, Chh.2, 7: pp.2, 8.
 18

65. cf. Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755), s.v. EMPIRIC:
‘A trier; an experimenter; such persons as have no true education in, or knowledge of physical
practice, but venture upon hearsay and observation only . . . Known only by experience;
practised only by rote, without rational grounds . . . Experimentally; according to
experience . . . without rational ground; charlatanically; in the manner of quacks.
EMPIRICISM: Dependence on experience without knowledge or art; quackery.’

66. The Outlines of Pyrrhonism, and Against the Mathematicians.

67. In particular, Books XVII–XIX: De catoptricis imaginibus, De staticis experimentis, and

De pneumaticis.

68. I do not see this dimension as essentially sociological, as would be implied by calling it
‘externalist’ (cf. n.2, above). A merely externalist interpretation cannot take proper account of
how different intellectual factions viewed each other — a question which belongs neither to
sociology nor to the internal logic of theories and concepts considered in abstract. The notion of
intention serves as a useful bridge by incorporating a rhetorical dimension.

69. I have not gone into the question of the secretiveness of some of the new philosophers.
Descartes planned the appearance of his philosophical system in the manner of a political
dissident organizing a coup, and he rebuked Regius for being too open about the ultimate
objectives of his philosophical revolution. Cf. Hiram Caton, The Origin of Subjectivity (New
Haven & London 1973), Ch.1.

70. E M. Schur, Labeling Deviant Behavior (New York, 1971). For its application to the
closely related topic of witchcraft, see C.J. Larner, Enemies of God (London, 1981) 98–100.

71. An interesting example of the alliance is the way in which astrological almanacs helped
spread the new ideas. Cf. Bernard Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press (London & Boston,
1979), Ch.6.

72. I have already given many examples of the mechanisation of the occultist world-picture,
and of disagreements as to what was to count as occult. A well-known example of an attempt at
empirical verification is the Brief Lives of John Aubrey (1626–97), which was intended as a
mass of observational data on which to base astrological correlations.

73. In modern times, one might contrast the parade of statistical orthodoxy of J.B. Rhine and
S.G. Soal in the field of ESP, and of Michel Gauquelin in the field of astrology, with the
disdain of logic shown by high-status scientists such as nuclear physicists (even some logicians
concede that logic is the handmaiden of physics).

74. For example, in 1665 the Hermeticists made a nearly successful bid to found a ‘Noble
Society for the advancement of Hermetick Physick’ in opposition to the medical establishment:
P.M. Rattansi, ‘The Helmontian-Galenist Controversy in Restoration England’, in Ambix 12
(1964) 1–23, esp. p.13. For a while there was a flourishing ‘Astrologers’ Club’, which was not
unlike the future Royal Society: Elias Ashmole (1617–1692), ed. C.H. Josten (Oxford, 1966),
Index, s.v. ‘Astrologers’ Club’.

75. See n.28, above, and D. Knoop & G.P. Jones, The Genesis of Freemasonry Manchester,
1957), and Karl R.H. Frick, Die Erleuchteten (Graz, 1973).

76. See my ‘Leibniz and the Nuremberg Alchemical Society’, in Studia Leibnitiana 6 (1974)
222–248; ‘Leibniz and Alchemy’, in Magia naturalis und die Entstehung der modernen
Naturwissenschaften, Studia Leibnitiana, Sonderheft 7 (1978) 166–180; ‘Alchemy and the
Development of Leibniz’s Metaphysics’, in Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa 22 (1982) 40–45.
 19

77. At the beginning of the century, any distinction between alchemy and chemistry was not a
distinction between superstition and science. For example, Andreas Libavius’s Alchemia is
praised by Hannaway (op. cit., n.27, above) for its modernity in comparison with Croll’s
Basilica chymica. Libavius himself makes a distinction within ‘alchemy’ between ‘chymia’ and
‘encheria’ — but this has nothing to do with the modern chemistry/alchemy distinction.
Indicative of the change in meaning is a casual remark by Gottfried Thomasius, in an
unpublished letter to Leibniz of 31.7.1696: ‘one of the Chemists, or, if you prefer, Alchemists.’
(Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, Hannover: Leibniz-Briefe 925, Bl.12v.)

78. Including a number of beliefs and attitudes which have subsequently been reinstated. The
eighteenth-century scientists of Paris were much harder on superstition, with their refusal to
accept reports of heavenly bodies landing on earth, than their modern counterparts in the
Groupe d’Études des Phénomènes Spatiaux (Sunday Times, 20.2.83).