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VI. | COSMIC FALL |
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Dictionary of the History of Ideas | ||
COSMIC FALL
Within the christian tradition remarkably
different
answers have been given to the question: What was
the extent
of the damage wrought by the Fall of Man?
On some accounts it was confined
to human nature;
on others, it was extended to other living beings, some-
times to the whole earth, and even to the
cosmos at
large. Some held that the damage was caused at the
is a continuing process of decay of the created world.
Those issues were debated with unusual intensity in
the late sixteenth century and the first half of the
seventeenth century. The controversy is of importance
to the historian of ideas, because among its participants
were major writers in very diversified fields, literary,
theological, philosophical, and scientific; and because
the patterns of argument used in the debate have great
intrinsic interest, arguments attempting to display the
whole world (or large parts of it) as decayed, ruined,
or as fecund and virile. The citation of empirical “in-
stances,” appeal to authority and metaphysical reason-
ing were supplemented by a lush and often eloquent
use of metaphor, analogy, and imagery.
The controversy would scarcely have been possible,
if the biblical accounts
of the Fall and its effects had
been free from ambiguity. What exactly was
the
“curse” elicited by sin, on the Genesis
account?
“Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to
thee
...” (Genesis 3:18). But was it only the ground and
its cultivation that were affected—or the entire earth?
The Septuagint and the Vulgate took
Genesis 3:17 to
mean “Cursed is the earth in thy
work”—the whole
earth
(ἡγη̂, terra).
The Authorized Version (more cor-
rectly) has “Cursed is the ground for thy
sake.” This
disparity added to possibilities for complex
disputes.
The narrative of the Flood was a second obvious
source for the view that
human sin had results not
limited to human affairs; though again the extent
and
duration of these results were disputable. We shall see
that one
of the last and most influential writings of
the main
controversy—Thomas Burnet's Sacred Theory
of
the Earth (Latin, 1681; English, 1684) attributed to
the Flood
nothing less than the formation of the chief
features of the earth's
topography as we know it.
Claims that the world is decaying, or is in its old
age, could find some Old
Testament support, if only
in a few much-quoted texts, such as Psalm
102:25-26:
“... the heavens are the work of thy hands. They
shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them
shall wax old like a
garment; as a vesture shalt thou
change them....”
To Saint Paul, the entire cosmos suffers and is in
need of redemption:
“The whole creation groaneth and
travaileth in pain
together” (Romans 8:22). The effects
of human sin are not
“insulated” from the rest of the
world: it is too
tightly integrated a unity. At least equal
support, however, could be drawn
from the Bible by
writers who denied there had been any Cosmic Fall.
They could make a strong case for claiming that in
the dominant biblical
view, nature continues to reflect
the divine goodness, wisdom, and creative
power; that
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firma
ment sheweth his handywork” (Psalm 19:1), and that
the world is not in decline or decay. God works in
the world, and not only as judge or avenger. He
“maketh the
clouds his chariot” and “walketh upon
the wings of
the wind” (Psalm 104:3).
As will be apparent, the materials of the controversy
were drawn from
several traditions—not only from the
biblical. Among Platonic
themes, the Theory of Forms
could be invoked to express a sharp and
congenial
contrast between the corruptible and defective objects
of
the spatiotemporal world and the perfection of the
timeless archetypes and
exemplars, the Forms them-
selves. In the
cosmogony of the Timaeus, Plato's divine
Craftsman
exerts his creative power upon a nature that
is recalcitrant in some
degree. Although such a view
could not ultimately be reconciled with the
Christian
doctrine of Creation, it had affinities with an account
of
nature as “fallen” and inhospitable to value; and
these affinities were exploited.
Aristotelian materials were also prominent, espe-
cially the concepts of “privation” and of
“contraries.”
We shall note how any lack of accord
between what
a thing is observed to be and what it ideally ought
to be
was to be taken by Goodman as a case of “priva-
tion,” and the mechanism by which Decay
proceeded
was the conflict of contrary, discordant elements.
Lucretius, in Book II of De rerum natura,
provided
a story of cosmic deterioration, which was often al-
luded to in later literature: “...
The ramparts of the
great world will be breached and collapse in
crumbling
ruin about us. Already it is far past its prime.”
Once
nature yielded of its own accord “smiling crops and
lusty vines... which now can scarcely be made to
grow by our toil....
Everything is gradually decaying
and nearing its end, worn out by old
age” (trans.
R. E. Latham, Baltimore, n.d.). From another point
of
view, however, Lucretius' world-picture could not
have been more
different from that of the Cosmic Fall
theorists. To him the universe was
“certainly not cre-
ated for us by
divine power: it is so full of imperfec-
tions” (Book V).
Cosmic Fall theories repeatedly drew upon the
imagery of a primeval Golden
Age and a subsequent
decline, symbolized by successively
“baser” metals. For
Christianity, this could not be a
recurrent, cyclical
movement, but a single irreversible decline. The
stages
were labeled in more than one way. “The Brasen-Age
is now, when Earth is worne,” wrote Fulke Greville
(Works, ed. A. B. Grosart, 4 vols., New York [1870],
III, 51f.). Philip Stubbes called this “... third and last
age...” indifferently “the yron or leaden age”
(The
Anatomie of Abuses, 1583).
Martin Luther's Commentary on the Book of Genesis
(1545) claimed that “The world degenerates and grows
on Adam... were light in comparison of those in-
flicted on us” (on Genesis 3:17-19). The Flood was an
important crisis. “The whole face of nature was
changed by that mighty convulsion”; and the trees and
fruits of the present-day earth “are but miserable rem-
nants... of those former riches which the earth pro-
duced when first created” (2:11-12).
Calvin, in his Institutes (1536), argued that if we
fail to see God's glory in the created world, the failure
is due not to
that world's decrepitude but to men's
own stupidity and inattentiveness. In
his Commentary
upon the Book of Genesis (1554),
however, he wrote
that “The inclemency of the air, frost,
thunder, un-
seasonable rains... and
whatever is disorderly in the
world, are the fruits of sin”
(3:19). Calvin denied that
“The earth was exhausted by the long
succession of
time.... They think more correctly who acknowledge
that,
by the increasing wickedness of man, the remain-
ing blessing of God is gradually diminished and im-
paired” (3:18). Calvin's conclusion is measured
and
balanced: “The order of the world is indeed disturbed
by our vices... yet we perceive the order of nature
so far to prevail, that
winter and summer annually
recur, that there is a constant succession of
days and
nights,” and so on (8:22).
From the mid-sixteenth century, the idea of a con-
tinuing process of cosmic decay began to have an
increasing
imaginative influence—an influence extend-
ing far beyond technical theology. Current scientific
observation could be interpreted as showing that not
only the
“sublunary” domain was involved in decay,
but that
the heavens too were not immune to corrup-
tion. For blemishes were observable on the moon; and
there appeared
the ominous “new star” of 1572.
“The antique world,” wrote Edmund Spenser, in The
Faerie Queene (1590-1609), “in its
first flowring
youth,/ Found no defect in his Creatours grace.”
But
the world today, he lamented, “being once amisse
growes
daily wourse and wourse:” with all its “crea-
tures from their course astray/ Till they
arrive at their
last ruinous decay” (II. vii. 16; V. Prologue i.
6).
In The First Anniversary (1611) and in his Sermons
John Donne gave powerful expression to the theme
of Decay. Donne saw man's
mortality as due to the
Fall: and he spreads the pathos of mortality
over
human life in general. “All our life is but a going
out
to the place of execution.” Corruption and decay did
not stop at man. “The noblest part, man, felt it first;
and
then/ Both beasts and plants, curst in the curse
of man” (The First Anniversary, lines 199-200).
“God
hath put into [the world] a reproofe, a rebuke...
sensible decay and age.” Earth had been first created
as a
smooth sphere: now it is “disfigured” with “warts
and pock-holes”—mountains and sea-depths. He
in-
stances too disorder in the seasons
and the untoward
appearing of new stars.
Despite his enthusiasm over the opening up of new
lands and new routes,
Samuel Purchas was also con-
vinced that this
is a decaying world, that no progress
can be permanent, and that
improvements in the
human condition are merely providential interludes.
... the earth is accursed, whereby many things are hurtfull
to mans
nature, and in those which are wholsome, there
is not such variety
of kinds, such plentie in each variety,
such ease in getting our
plenty, or such quality in what
is gotten.... Had not man sinned,
there should not haue
needed the death of beasts to nourish his
life, which without
such stay should haue beene immortall: the vse
whereof
was after granted, rather to supply necessitie when
the
Floud had weakened the Earth, then to minister a greater
abundance then before it had
(Purchas his Pilgrimage, 1613;
1626 ed.,
I, 14).
Sir Walter Ralegh's History of the World (1614)
presented the image of a nature whose energies are
all but exhausted:
“Both the ages of men, and the
nature of all things Time hath
changed”—and changed
for the worse.
Some interesting variations on (and hesitations over)
Cosmic Fall doctrine
can be found in Greville's poems.
Sometimes Greville emphasizes the limits
of change
and decay: “Poor Earth, that dost presume to
judge
the skye;/ Cynthia is euer round, and neuer varies”
(Works, III, 64). “Eternall Truth... [is]
Onely exilèd
from man's fleshly heart” (III, 126). Yet
Greville can
also say: “For as the World by Time still more
de-
clines,/ Both from the truth and
wisedom of Creation:/
So at the Truth she more and more repines,/ As
making
hast to her last declination” (II, 30), and
“Thy word
incarnate, glorious heauen, darke hell/ Lye
shadowed
vnder man's degeneration” (III, 142).
The most detailed dispute on the whole issue of a
Cosmic Fall is contained
in the writings of Godfrey
Goodman and George Hakewill. Goodman's The Fall
of Man... was published in 1616. Hakewill's
defense
of an undecayed world, An Apologie... of the
Power
and Providence of God... appeared in 1627: its third
edition, 1635, included arguments by Goodman, and
further responses from
Hakewill.
Goodman argued that to be aware of the vast extent
of decay and disorder
brought about by the Fall was
essential to contrite and devout living. The
world was
originally well constructed to serve and to delight man,
its
centerpiece. Every feature of the world today that
thwarts this purpose can
be known, for that very rea-
son, to be a result
of the Fall. Nature as a whole is
“directed to man”
(Fall, p. 14); thus when man breaks
“his owne bounds... it must necessarily follow, that
together in man, should likewise be inordinate” (p. 17).
To Goodman again there would have been no mortality
but for sin: “Obseruing the course and prouidence of
nature, man should be exempted from death” (p. 331).
Evil proliferates: while there is only one (precarious)
state of health, there are innumerable forms of ill-
health, countless ways to die. Man's intellectual powers
are diminished; his passions conflict with his will; con-
stant war is waged between man and the animals, and
among the animals themselves. The rest of nonhuman
nature is no less afflicted. Nature seems “more carefull
of thornes, then of the best fruits” (p. 225, margin).
“If God punish the earth with a great drought... it
argues the barrennesse of our nature, in respect of good
workes” (p. 92). Contrariwise, when we want it dry,
we are given harmfully wet weather—for instance, at
harvesttime. Man cannot feel at home in a world, the
greater part of which is wild and uninhabitable. Good-
man attributes an important share in the disturbance
of nature to the Flood: “This generall deluge was
indeed the generall confusion of nature” (p. 281). The
heavens are not exempt from decay: the sun's heat has
diminished. The 1572 “comet” showed that change was
occurring in the superlunary sphere where no change
should be.
The Fall of Man... is a remarkable compendium
of
vilifying arguments and imagery. Because death
terminates life, Goodman
argues, “Our life is a kind
of dying.” As in the
example from Donne, Goodman
too spreads the emotion proper to dying over
the
activities of living as well. The further spreading of
decay-and-senility language to the nonhuman world is
justified in terms of
the pervasive analogy between
microcosm and macrocosm, and by the claim
that
disorder at the teleological center of the world cannot
fail to
infect all the rest, which is “bound or knit
together in
man.”
Any skill that today requires study and labor to
acquire,
“must” have been possessed by man, innately,
before
the Fall, and required no laborious process of
learning. Goodman's
instances range from abilities like
swimming (p. 88), to intellectual
activity and human
communication in general (e.g., pp. 305, 299). If it
is
possible to imagine ourselves as possessing an ability
in a more
perfect manner than we do, we can infer
that, before the Fall, men did
actually possess it in
that way. Today “we (that is, our souls)
doe not receiue
the things themselves, but the species or images of
things” (p. 46). “Were it
not, that man is falne,” we
should be able to reason infallibly;
the soul dealing
“directly” with
“intelligible objects” themselves (p. 48).
Goodman's view of the relations between God and
nature are complex. For all
his constant emphasis on
the corruptions of nature, he does not deny
that nature
is in God's control. “God... hath so ordained
nature,
to worke His owne purpose” (p. 269).
“Nature” and
“grace” are not
set in opposition: “both of them pro-
ceed from one fountaine,” God being author of both
(p.
10). But Goodman, in fact, oscillates between seeing
nature (God-made,
basically good) as God's obedient
instrument for man's correction, and
seeing it as itself
horrifyingly involved in disorder and disintegration.
The decay of nature is not the work of specific and
constant divine
interventions. From the very beginning,
there have been
“contrary” elements in nature, capable
of conflict,
privation, and corruption. Before the Fall
God prevented these destructive
possibilities from
being realized; but since the Fall, he prevents
them
no longer; although he does restrain the process from
leading
directly to the annihilation of the world.
George Hakewill's Apologie opposes Goodman's po-
sition in argument, attitude, and tone.
Instead of the
imagery of senescence and exhaustion, we find constant
reference to new birth, growth, and virility. The curve
of
“decline” is repudiated. Hakewill combats Good-
man's view not only by opposing instance
to instance
(he sees that appeal to cases cannot be decisive), but
by
attacking his use of the microcosm-macrocosm
analogy, denying his general
account of decay through
the conflict of contraries, and arguing that the
Cosmic
Fall doctrine is incompatible with the demands both
of theology
and morality.
On the last point: Hakewill claims that the doctrine
of decay tends not to
be morally healthful, but “rather
to breed sloath then to
quicken industrie” (Apologie,
p. 18).
What is morally salutary is to contemplate God's
wisdom and goodness, as
these are still amply displayed
in his creation. Not that Hakewill is an
unbounded
optimist, or takes human sin lightly. God will end the
world, and there will be a final judgment. But to claim
that God will act
in these ways is altogether different
from positing a running-down of the
world. Both
Scripture and reason lead us to expect “that the
world
shall bee by fire totally and finally dissolved and an-
nihilated” (Book IV, Sec. 4).
Hakewill denies that human nature is deteriorating
over the centuries. He
compares the men of his own
day with the Romans. Were the Romans braver?
No:
the corruption of their aggressive aims prevents us
commending
them as brave. (Hakewill, i.e., makes it
a necessary condition of bravery
that the action should
be in a good cause.) Men today are freer from
various
kinds of lasciviousness, luxury, and vicious excess. We
have
not become more vulnerable to diseases: some
diseases have in fact abated.
There has been no general
decline in length of life. Cases of unusual
longevity
among the ancients can be ascribed to special acts of
lating of the world. Whereas Goodman lamented a
decline of intellectual powers, Hakewill reminds us of
recent increases in knowledge and accomplishment, in
the arts, in philosophy, science, and technology. In
religion too Hakewill tells a story of progressive de-
liverance from superstition and idolatry, and from
inadequate conceptions of God: there has been progress
also in understanding the Christian faith.
With nonhuman nature, Hakewill again believes he
can break the pattern of
decline. The earth is no less
fertile than in the past—though
men may sometimes
blunder in their cultivation. Goodman had been quick
to point out areas where the land is becoming less
hospitable to man:
Hakewill alleged that the contrary
pattern was no less
prevalent—a compensatory resto-
ration and improvement of conditions in other regions.
The eroding
of barren mountains is followed by the
appearance of a fertile alluvial
plain, rich for the
plough and ready for new life. Hakewill is very
willing
to acknowledge mutability; but he makes a very sharp
distinction between mutability and decay, a distinction
essential to his
whole case. In place of Goodman's
pattern of steady change-for-the-worse,
Hakewill thus
sought to establish a cyclical pattern—a pattern
of
decay-and-restoration. Compensation or renewal can
be counted upon
to follow injurious events. Certainly,
this pattern is not always
empirically observable, but
where it is not, Hakewill has a parable to meet
the
case. A human observer is like someone who studies
the
“end of a peece of Arras” and “conceives
perhaps
an hand or head which hee sees to be very unartificially
made.” But if he should uncover the whole, he “soone
findes that it carries a due and just proportion to the
body”
(p. 96). The total pattern comes into view. So
it is with any apparent
decay in nature: if we could
assume a synoptic view, that fragmentary
pattern
would be seen as part of a larger design, a design that
involves “reciprocal compensation” (p. 28).
To consider finally the heavens: we are not entitled
to infer decay from the
evidence of the telescope. What
the telescope reveals (e.g., spots on the
moon) has
always been so, though we have not been able to see
it so
clearly till now. The issue is not, in any case,
to be settled empirically.
Hakewill argues that there
are no conflicting elements in the heavens that
could
make deterioration possible. He takes the question: Are
the
heavens in fact decaying? as equivalent to: Are
they “in a
naturall course... capable of such a sup-
posed
decay?” (p. 67). The heavens, furthermore, are
moved by angels,
and for that reason cannot “erre or
faile in their
motions.”
To oppose Goodman effectively, Hakewill had to
deny that the unhappy effects of human sin must nec-
essarily “infect”
the cosmic environment, and he ar-
gued that
these effects are contained and confined
within the little world of man. He
claimed that, in
general, there is no close and reliable set of corre-
spondences between microcosm and
macrocosm. The
analogy, he believed, is a seriously misleading one,
and
to use it uncritically is to ignore important qualitative
differences among the constituents of the world.
It should be clear that Hakewill did not counter
Goodman's metaphysics with
a “scientific” and anti-
speculative theory. Hakewill, like other more scientifi-
cally-minded opponents of
Cosmic Fall theories after
him, certainly stressed the orderliness of
nature. But
he depended very heavily upon authority, on appeals
to the
supernatural and miraculous, and on eschato-
logical doctrine. Further, as Goodman relied on a
pervasive
imagery of gloom, deterioration, and death,
so Hakewill bombarded his
reader with a selective and
persuasive imagery of awakening life, vigorous
growth,
and fecundity. His aim was to “free the world from
old age.” The elements “by continuall generation each
out of other renew their parts” (p. 109). The “slumber-
ing drowzie spirit of the Grecians began againe to be
revived and
awakened” (p. 217). Medicine was “borne
againe” under Galen (p. 226); and so on, through topic
after
topic.
If fecundity and growth are emphasized by Hake-
will, so equally is diversity, as a basic positive
value.
Where his opponents tended to see diversified scenery
(e.g.,
mountain-and-plain) as a declension from an
original smoother,
“perfect,” topography, the diversity
itself is seen
by Hakewill as intrinsically good. The
debate over nature's alleged decay
was thus, in impor-
tant measure, a contest
between alternative criteria of
aesthetic value.
Among other authors of the early seventeenth cen-
tury who expressed views analogous to Goodman's was
Robert Burton
(Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621). “The
virtue of all the vegetals is decayed,” he wrote: men
grow less
in stature. Burton accepted the analogy be-
tween microcosm and macrocosm. He preferred nev-
ertheless to raise questions rather than offer
systematic
answers on Goodman's lines. Some apparently dis-
ordered events may in fact be orderly,
though not
properly understood by us. He muses over the existence
of
marine fossils: Are these due to “Noah's Flood, as
Christians
suppose, or is there a vicissitude of sea and
land?”
Drummond of Hawthornden (A Cypresse Grove,
1623) made
liberal use of the imagery of cosmic decay.
Inconstancy, he believed, is
unlimited throughout the
whole creation, the heavens included. In all growth
downward plunge to senility. Today universally the
wheel is on that downward swing.
The central theme is tersely expressed in George
Herbert's poem “Decay”:
Of thy great love, once spread, as in an urn
Doth closet up itself, and still retreat,
Cold sinne still forcing it, till it return,
And calling Justice, all things burn.
the world, and Cracked/ The whole frame with his
fall” (“Corruption”).
John Swan's Speculum mundi (1635) draws a
sharp
contrast between early times “when all things were
in
their full strength,” and the present day, “... this
weak age.” Men today are
“Pygmies”—“reeds com-
pared to the Cedars of those
times.” The air is now
“corrupted”; and
the “fruits of the earth of a feeble
nourishment”
(4th ed. [1670], p. 457). The Flood
wrought damage through the action of
“the salt waters
of the great deep,” and also by way
of “vapours or
... Exhalations” (p. 458). Swan is not
undiscriminating.
Hills and mountains, for example, are not held to be
the results of Cosmic Fall, but “were created in the
beginning” (p. 37). He testifies to the “delectation
and
profit of the mountains, which do thereby... amplifie
the goodness
of God in his works” (p. 39). On the other
hand, decay is active
in the heavens: we read of dim-
ming heavenly
bodies and ominous signs of their cor-
ruption.
Not all Cosmic Fall theories were theories of a
continuing process of decay.
Decay is denied, for in-
stance, in Jean F.
Senault's L'Homme criminel (Man
Become Guilty, or the Corruption of Nature by Sinne,
1650). Nature's order was damaged at the time of man's
Fall: there was loss
in beauty, fertility, harmony, and
in the proper subordination of animals
to men: the sun's
light was diminished. But these were once-for-all
changes, not signs of a continuing decline or waning
of nature's powers.
John Milton also rejected the lan-
guage of old
age and decline. The poem Naturam non
pati
senium (1628) denied that nature's face withers,
“overgrown with furrowing wrinkles,” her womb
grown
barren. Nor does “the never-ending hunger of
the years... harry
the stars.”
In order to stress the enormity of the Fall of man,
in Paradise Lost, Milton did describe cosmic upheaval.
At the
instant Eve plucked the apple, “Earth felt the
wound”
(IX.782). Then the sun was ordered to molest
the earth with
“cold and heat/ Scarce tollerable.”
Inclement
seasonal change begins: “Else had the
Spring/ Perpetual smil'd on Earth with Vernant
Flours.” War starts among the animals; “... To graze
the Herb all leaving,/ Devourd each other; nor stood
much in awe/ Of
man.” Although human morality goes
on deteriorating, and Milton
speaks of the “growing
miseries which Adam saw/ Alreadie in
part,” the
changes in nonhuman nature are not described in
terms
of a continuous process of decay (X.650-719).
In his poem “Upon Appleton House” Andrew
Marvell
claimed that the topography of the world
today is dramatically different
from its appearance at
first creation. It is now a mere
“heap,” “together
hurled;/ All negligently
overthrown,/ Gulfes, Deserts,
Precipices, Stone.”
A most detailed and influential account of how the
world changed for the
worse was Thomas Burnet's
Telluris theoria sacra (1681; Sacred Theory of the Earth,
1684). Burnet set out to prove that
the topography
familiar to us was largely determined by the cataclysm
of the Flood. Originally the earth was “smooth” and
“regular.” “It had the Beauty of Youth and
blooming
Nature, fresh and fruitful, and not a Wrinkle, Scar or
Fracture in all its Body.” Below the crust were the
“waters under the earth.” Because of mounting pres-
sure from vaporized water, the crust became
weak-
ened, and eventually fractured.
“When the appointed
time was come that All-wise Providence had
design'd
for the Punishment of a sinful World, the whole Fab-
rick brake, and the Frame of the Earth was
torn in
Pieces,” mountains and sea-depths being formed.
Burnet intended his account to be at once naturalistic
and theologically
acceptable; but the possibility of such
a harmony looked less plausible as
the implications of
the theory were worked out. He could not defend
his
theory without being forced well away from any or-
thodox interpretation of Scripture.
If science and theory were in tension in Burnet, so
also were two criteria
of aesthetic value. On the one
hand, the perfect earth was the smooth earth: all ir-
regularity was subsequent deformity. On the other
hand, the
ruggedness and vastness of mountains had
a fascination for Burnet, as his
eloquence makes clear:
terror and mystery often assume positive
aesthetic
value, both in Burnet himself and in the many writers
who
learned from him—among them Edward Young
and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge.
Among authors who weakened the case for a Cosmic
Fall, Francis Bacon must
have first mention. The de-
velopment of the
new sciences required attitudes to,
and beliefs about, the relation between
nature and man,
very different from those we have been recounting in
this article so far. Bacon rejected any adulation of
ancient authorities,
and repudiated the myth of a
possible, men must come to understand nature, not
exclusively as a background to the human drama, or
as a participator in that drama, but in terms of its own
laws and its own life. Hakewill drew upon Bacon in
his polemic against Goodman; although Hakewill him-
self relied heavily upon appeals to authority.
John Wilkins (Discovery of a World in the Moone,
1638) suggested that the universe may well not be the
nursery of human
beings alone. There may even be
life on other worlds, creatures on the moon
perhaps;
though we cannot tell of what kind. It was becoming
increasingly hard to see the little world of man (as
Goodman saw it) as a
center from which malign in-
fluence would be
expected to pass to the rest of the
cosmos.
Cosmic Fall and Mutability themes appear in the
writings of Sir Thomas
Browne (Religio medici, 1642,
written 1635;
Hydriotaphia, 1658); but Browne did not
consistently identify himself with the view that the
world decays. In human
affairs decay is acknowledged:
and he can claim that “while we
look for incorruption
in the heavens, we finde they are but like the
Earth”
(Hydriotaphia, Ch. V). Yet he also
affirms that the world
is not in its old age or in progressive
decline—though
its end is not very distant (Christian Morals, III, Sec.
26).
The Cambridge Platonist, Henry More, makes very
evident a growing tendency
to look to nature not for
signs of decay but rather for evidence of divine
benefi-
cence, wisdom, and design. In
his Antidote against
Atheism (1652), More adduces
many instances of
“things as might be otherwise, and yet are far
better
as they are.” The structure of animals “is far
more
perfect then will merely serve for their bare
existence”
(Antidote, in A Collection of Several Philosophical
Writings
[1662], p. 5). On the alleged inhospitability
of the world, More argued
that it is necessary “there
should be sufficient difficulty and
hardship for all sensi-
ble and intellectual
creatures to grapple and contest
with” (Divine
Dialogues [1668; 1743 ed.], p. 155).
“The inclination
of the axis of the earth is so duly
proportionated
for the making it as habitable as it can
be, that the wit of man cannot
imagine any posture
better” (p. 162). The existence of wild
animals is justi-
fied on two somewhat
different scores—as a “ready
instrument of Divine
wrath... and a great enricher
of the history of nature, which would be
defective, did
it not run from one extreme to another” (p. 196).
More
generally, in the biological world are “infinite
examples
of a steddy... acting according to skill and
design”
(pp. 22f.). Any appearance of malignity in nature
is
due to an inadequate and partial view of a world that
in reality is
glorious, diversified, and full.
The vitality and progress of the sciences in the
mid-seventeenth century
were taken increasingly as
refuting claims about a general decay. Joseph Glanvill's
Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661) argued on these lines,
and so did, Henry Power's Experimental Philosophy
(1664). “This is the Age wherein all mens Souls are
in a kind of
fermentation, and the spirit of Wisdom
and Learning begins to
mount”—to mount, not to
decay (Exper. Phil., pp. 191f.). The earth is not physi-
cally the world's center, nor is there adequate
reason
to believe that man is the raison
d'être of the universe.
All nature is not directed
to man, agreed John Spencer
(Discourse concerning
Prodigies, 1663-65): nature has
its own laws, unvarying from the
first creation of the
world.
The replacing of a nature in decay by a well-
designed nature was furthered by John Ray's The
Wis-
dom of God Manifested in the Works
of the Creation
(1691). Like Henry More, Ray argued that man is
not
the sole center of value and significance, and that the
other
creatures have a life of their own. As well as
wise contrivance, fecundity is one main criterion of
divine creative
power; and because of God's fecundity,
we are entitled to infer, for
instance, that “Every fixed
star has [its] Chorus of
planets.” Decay is expressly
denied in Ray's Miscellaneous Discourses (ca. 1692);
and we are at the furthest
remove, in these writings,
from Goodman's picture of a disordered and sin-
devastated world.
Cosmic Fall speculation (Burnet's in particular) was
described as the
product of poetic imagination, an
“Ingenious
Romance,” by John Keil in his Examination
of
Dr. Burnet's Theory of the Earth (1698). Keil found
no lack of
mathematical and scientific muddle in
Burnet. Burnet's account of the
cracking of the earth's
crust will not bear scrutiny: “The heat
of the sun could
never reach so far into so thick a Crust as to be
great
enough to raise water into Vapours (Examination...,
pp. 175, 147ff.); nor would there have been
“so much
water in the Abyss as was sufficient to cover the
face
of the whole Earth” (p. 175). Keil concludes:
“...
never any Book was fuller of Errors and Mistakes in
Philosophy, so none ever abounded with more beautiful
Scenes and surprising
Images of Nature” (pp. 175-76).
A succinct and forthright denial of any anthropo-
centrism can be found in Pierre Bayle. “If
we had a
proper conception of the universe, we should readily
understand that the death or the birth of a Prince is
such a small
event—considering the nature of things
as a
whole—that it does not merit the concern of
Heaven”
(Pensées diverses... à l'occasion de
la Com
ète, 1683).
Celestial phenomena, that is to say, are not primarily
concerned with human
weal or woe, nor are they to
directed, not expressly against Cosmic Fall theory, but
against the whole climate of thought in which these
had flourished. One way of combatting the theory was
by affirming the integrity of man, and a fortiori the
integrity of nature. But equally well it could be coun-
tered, as here, by playing down the cosmic importance
of man and deploring his vanity.
In the eighteenth-century literature of ideas Cosmic
Fall controversy has
not ceased. To take only one
example: Voltaire devotes some words to a
criticism
of Flood-theories like Burnet's. Some writers, he says,
have
believed that “the world we inhabit is a mere
ruin, and that
such a fate befits guilty creatures like
ourselves.” But these
writers are to be contrasted with
those more enlightened philosophers who
“discern a
wonderful and necessary order in that seeming-
confusion.”
Voltaire realizes that there is enormous scope for
divergent interpretations
of the same data, depend-
ing on one's
presuppositions and predilections. “To
some, all seems disorder
and vengeance; to others,
design and goodness” (Oeuvres complètes, Paris [1879],
22,
549).
But straightforward error is also involved in those
theories. Burnet and his
fellow spirits, for instance,
have vastly exaggerated the present
irregularity of the
earth's surface: considering the proportion of the
height of mountains to the size of the earth, there is
less irregularity
than on the surface of an orange!
Essential to most theories of a Cosmic Fall was the
analogy between
microcosm and macrocosm—between
the world of man and the greater
world around him.
Only if there were some necessary correspondence
between the activities of man and events in the non-
human world would it be at all plausible that man's
Fall should
have cosmic repercussions, or that the
pattern of man's growth, maturity,
and senescence
would be doubled by the course of nature as a whole.
This is, of course, a stronger claim than the claim that
the creation of
man was the culmination of God's work.
And one could hold the latter while
denying the for-
mer. A view like Burnet's, on
the other hand, which
tried to give a physical and natural explanation of
the
Flood and its effects, was not dependent on the anal-
ogy between microcosm and macrocosm.
Denials of the analogy were sometimes specific and
direct, sometimes
indirect and implicit. It could be
argued, for instance, that God's glory
was more fittingly
manifested by his limiting the effects of sin to
humanity
itself and not allowing a universal decay. The analogy
was
indirectly challenged by any argument against
man's central importance in
the scheme of things, and
by the increasing success of science in
explaining events
by natural laws that make no reference at all to human
affairs.
So long as the traditional distinction remained be-
tween the sublunary, corruptible realm and the sup-
posedly incorruptible heavens, advances in astronomy
(such as Galileo's observations of irregularities on the
moon in 1610)
could furnish new disturbing data for
theories of a Cosmic Fall. But the
same new science
was simultaneously making untenable that distinction
itself. When it had lost its authority, the Cosmic Fall
theories had lost
also their most dramatic demon-
stration
of decay.
The New Science did not oust teleology: on the
contrary, it gave a quite new
popularity to the Argu-
ment from Design. In
the writings of the Royal Society
scientist-theologians, nature was seen as
a single well-
ordered system, mirroring
the supremely intelligent
divine Mind. All apparent disorder and
irregularity
could in the end be brought under the unity and sim-
plicity of Newtonian law. There was an
immense spate
of writings that sought to exhibit the marvelous fitness
and benevolent contrivance in the relation of organism
and environment. But
it is obvious how very different
were teleological views of this general
kind from the
teleology which figured in the Cosmic Fall
theories—
theories that tended to see all nature as a stage-
backcloth to the drama of man, and
which proclaimed
a radical breakdown of order.
The topic of nature's inhospitability to man, which
we saw recurrent in the
Cosmic Fall literature, re-
appeared in a
variety of much later writings. One
thinks, for instance, of J. S. Mill's
essay, “Nature”
(1874), T. H. Huxley's lecture,
“Evolution and Ethics”
(1893), and of writers such as
Giacomo Leopardi and
Thomas Hardy. (For an earlier eloquent statement
one
may study “Philo's” contributions in David Hume's
Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, 1779.) But
none
of these posits a prior harmonious and hospitable state
from
which a Fall took place; and none is a defender
of Christian theism.
It is interesting and instructive to bring the Cosmic
Fall controversy into
relation with the tradition of the
Great Chain of Being. Ideas central to
that tradition
were invoked by both sides in the polemic. Argument
for
the fallenness of nature was facilitated by the claim
that the whole of
nature is a closely interconnected
hierarchical system; it is a chain all
of whose links must
be intact, or else disaster ensues to the whole
system.
The thought of the chain in its original perfection
provides
an ironical counterpoint to Goodman's ac-
count
of nature as it was in his day: only a grim car-
icature remains. (Compare also Sir Richard Barckley,
who
specifically likened the cosmos to a disintegrating
chain—The Felicitie of Man, 1598.)
Opponents of Cosmic Fall theories, however, could
appeal to other elements
of the Great Chain tradition.
That tradition saw the world as the work of
divine
fecundity: diversity and variety were supreme values.
Better a
world with all possible types of being (graded
in value from God downwards)
than a world with little
variety, even though it contained other, high
forms of
value. Now, one who made that sort of value-judgment
could
easily be persuaded that the present-day earth
with its varied topography
was preferable to the
smooth “perfection” of the
imagined pre-Fall sphere.
If preferable, then there is no sign that a
catastrophe
occurred: the world we see could be the world as God
made
it. Again the higher the value placed upon the
infinite divine fecundity,
the more difficult it was to
believe that such a deity would permit his
world to
decay or to suffer “old age.” The doctrine
would argue
against God's superabundant generosity and creative
power.
The Craftsman of Plato's Timaeus was not
“grudging” in his creative work: likewise Hakewill
argued, God could not be “niggardly or sparing....”
The Great Chain tradition dealt with the problem
of evil in several familiar
ways. What we call evil is
really imperfection—measured by
distance from the
summit of the hierarchy of being. For a hierarchy to
be possible, there must be beings at all distances from
the summit. Again,
only a synoptic view of the world
as a whole (which is beyond our
capacities) could
reveal the necessary place of apparently evil events
in the good totality. On such a view there was no
need to resort to the
idea of a Cosmic Fall or a Decay
of Nature, in order to account for the
presence of
evil.
Although theories of a Cosmic Fall were primarily
and originally ventures in
theology, they had implica-
tions, as we
have seen, far outside the theological field.
It made a great difference to
a person's aesthetic
expe-
rience of nature, for instance, whether
he saw nature
as a colossal ruin, a rapidly running-down world, or
as
manifesting divine splendor undiminished. The Fall
of nature was widely
admitted to involve an aesthetic
Fall. The aesthetic repercussions of the
Cosmic Fall
were expressed not only in systematic statements like
Goodman's and Hakewill's, but in countless brief, fugi-
tive allusions in poetry and prose. The theory
offered
a rich stock of imagery; imagery of barrenness, old age,
the
proliferation of weeds and poisons, and fostered
a sense that the earth had
once possessed a beauty of
which only a few hints now remained. So John
Donne:
“... the worlds beauty is decai'd, or gone”
(The First
Anniversary); and Fulke Greville:
“Beauty growne
sick; nature corrupt and nought” (Works, II, 52). Late
in the controversy, as we noted
in Burnet, the aesthetic
quality of a ruined world became charged with an
interesting ambiguity—evoking awe and fascination as
well as dread.
Although rarely given prominence in twentieth-
century theological discussions, Cosmic Fall specula-
tion is not dead. One significant statement
appeared
in N. P. Williams' The Ideas of the Fall and of
Original
Sin (1924). According to Williams, there occurred a
Fall in the “life-force” itself, “before the
differentiation
of life into its present multiplicity of forms and the
emergence of separate species” (p. 523). This pre-
cosmic vitiation of the whole
“life-force” was respon-
sible both for human evil and for the conflictful and
wasteful
aspects of nonhuman nature.
In some versions responsibility is placed upon a
plurality of rebellious
conscious beings other than man,
beings whose Fall precedes man's. C. C. J.
Webb
thought it possible that “Superhuman evil wills exist
and have injuriously affected the environment of hu-
manity as a whole” (Problems in the
Relations of God
and Man [1911], p. 270). And in the
mid-twentieth
century Dom Illtyd Trethowan could claim from a
Roman
Catholic standpoint, that “sin... started with
the
angels.” A result of their Fall, “... we may sup-
pose, was a disorganization of the material
universe,
over which, according to a reasonable theory, the
angels had
charge” (An Essay in Christian Philosophy
[1954], p. 128). Such theories are, of course, left with
a serious problem
over how to maintain God's unquali-
fied
omnipotence, and his perfect goodness and fairness
to his
creatures—in permitting this
“disorganization.”
But the problem may be ultimately
no more or less
intractable, in this sort of theory, than in any other
Christian treatment of evil.
Although the details of the Cosmic Fall controversies
can appear remote and
even grotesque to a reader
today, such a reader cannot fail to be reminded
also
of certain deeply troubling issues of his own time. He
may not
speculate whether a deity has permitted the
continuing process of decay of
nature on account of
man's disobedience; but he is aware of the
problems
of man's own despoliation of his planet, the rendering
extinct of animal species, industrial pollution of air and
water, open cast
or strip mining, radioactive fallout.
The idiom of discussion is a
predominantly secular one,
but there remain striking analogies in tone and
attitude,
between the statement of the old anxieties and of the
new.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Unless otherwise identified, translations are by R. W.
Hepburn.
Godfrey Goodman, The Fall of Man; or the Corruption
of
Nature... (London, 1616). George Hakewill, An
Apolo-
gie or Declaration of the
Power and Providence of God in
All Coherence Gone (Chicago, 1949)—a study of the six-
teenth- and seventeenth-century debate, to which this arti-
cle is much indebted. Marjorie Nicolson, Mountain Gloom
and Mountain Glory (Ithaca, N. Y., 1959).
R. W. HEPBURN
[See also Chain of Being; Cycles; Design Argument; Evil;Hierarchy; Macrocosm; Primitivism; Sin and Salvation;
Sublime.]
Dictionary of the History of Ideas | ||