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         The Augustan Reprint Society


                   HENRY MORE

                  _Democritus
                 Platonissans_

                     (1646)


                _Introduction by_

                 P. G. STANWOOD


             Publication Number 130
     WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
     University of California, Los Angeles
                      1968




GENERAL EDITORS

  George Robert Guffey, _University of California, Los Angeles_
  Maximillian E. Novak, _University of California, Los Angeles_
  Robert Vosper, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_


ADVISORY EDITORS

  Richard C. Boys, _University of Michigan_
  James L. Clifford, _Columbia University_
  Ralph Cohen, _University of Virginia_
  Vinton A. Dearing, _University of California, Los Angeles_
  Arthur Friedman, _University of Chicago_
  Louis A. Landa, _Princeton University_
  Earl Miner, _University of California, Los Angeles_
  Samuel H. Monk, _University of Minnesota_
  Everett T. Moore, _University of California, Los Angeles_
  Lawrence Clark Powell, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_
  James Sutherland, _University College, London_
  H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., _University of California, Los Angeles_

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY

  Edna C. Davis, _William Andrews Clark Memorial Library_




INTRODUCTION


Henry More (1614-1687), the most interesting member of that group
traditionally known as the Cambridge Platonists, lived conscientiously
and well. Having early set out on one course, he never thought to change
it; he devoted his whole life to the joy of celebrating, again and
again, "a firm and unshaken Belief of the Existence of GOD..., a God
infinitely Good, as well as infinitely Great...."[1] Such faith was
for More the starting point of his rational understanding: "with the
most fervent Prayers" he beseeched God, in his autobiographical
"Praefatio Generalissima," "to set me free from the dark Chains, and
this so sordid Captivity of my own Will." More offered to faith all
which his reason could know, and so it happened that he "was got into a
most Joyous and Lucid State of Mind," something quite ineffable; to
preserve these "Sensations and Experiences of my own Soul," he wrote
"a pretty full Poem call'd _Psychozoia_" (or _A Christiano-Platonicall
display of Life_), an exercise begun about 1640 and designed for no
audience but himself. There were times, More continued in his
autobiographical remarks, when he thought of destroying _Psychozoia_
because its style is rough and its language filled with archaisms. His
principal purpose in that poem was to demonstrate in detail the
spiritual foundation of all existence; Psyche, his heroine, is the
daughter of the Absolute, the general Soul who holds together the
metaphysical universe, against whom he sees reflected his own soul's
mystical progress. More must, nevertheless, have been pleased with his
labor, for he next wrote _Psychathanasia Platonica: or Platonicall Poem
of the