“By Gradual Scale Sublim’d": Jean d’Espagnet and the Ontological Tree in Paradise Lost, Book V Stanton J. Linden Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 52, No. 4. (Oct. - Dec., 1991), pp. 603-615. Stable URL: ‘tips links jstor.orgsici?sici~G022-5037%28199 L1O%IF 12%2952%3 Ad %ICOUS%IA%22GSSIDEIED 0 COMIBLV Journal of the History of Meas is currently published by University of Pennsylvania Press. ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of [STOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hntp: eww jstor org/aboutiterms.htenl. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in par, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not dowsload an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the [STOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any Further use ofthis work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at bupisfovww tor org/journatsfupenn biel. Bach copy of any part ofa JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, ISTOR isan independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding ISTOR, please contact suppon @jstor-org. hup:tvwo jstor orgy Fri Dee 15:34:58 2006“By gradual scale sublim’d”: Jean d’Espagnet and the Ontological Tree in Paradise Lost, Book V Stanton J. Linden In contrast to the strictness of rank and adherence to hierarchical order that exist among celestial beings and arc repeatedly asserted by God, Satan, and Abdiel in Paradise Lost, Book V, Milton sees the relationship between the celestial and terrestrial spheres as nmuch less sharply graduated and demarcated. As a result, the potential for progress and evolutionary development is very great in prelapsarian Adam and Eve, “if [they] be found obedient.” Milton’s optimistic and fluidic ontology is expressed most memorably in Raphael's familiar speech beginning “one Almighty is, from whom / All things proceed”(V, 4694f),' with its famous image of the tree becoming increasingly spiritous and rarefied as it rises toward its divine source. This arboreal image—Milton’s metaphor for the scale and operation of nature—along with other parallels, I shall later argue, has. a notable analogue, perhaps an immediate source, in Jean 4’ Espagnet’s Enchyridion Physicae Restituae, first published in Latin in 1623, often reptinted in the first half of the seventeenth century, and translated into English in 1651. But before considering the case for this contemporary “All references to Paradite Last and Milton's other works are from Johm Milton Complete Poems and Majar Prose, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (Indianapolis, 1957); hereafter cited as Milzon. Lynn Thorndike cepoets thatthe Enchyridion Phystcae Restirutae was first published {in Paris in Latin in 1623; second and third editions appeared in 1638, and others followed in 1642, 1647, 1653, and 1702 (see A History of Magic and Experimental Science [8 vols. ‘New York, 1958], VIT, 389). My references are to the English ccanslation by Dr. Johann Everard, entitled Enchyridion Physicae Resttuiae: The Summary of Physics Recovered. Wherein the rye Harmony of Nature is explained (London, 1651; Wing E 3276A). Paren- thetial page references appearing in my text are to this edition, Attempts ta reconstruct the contents of Milton's libeary have produced no evidence that he owned a copy of any edition of Espagnet’s Enchyridion, see Jackson C. Boswell, Milion's Library (New York, 1975), 603 Copyright 1991 by JOURNAL OF THE History oF IDEAS, INC.04 ‘Stanton J. Linden French author and his popular Handbook of Physics Restored, both pre- viously ovetlooked in Milton scholarship, I will briefly reexamine the image's larger context, arguing that nearly all of the preceding part of Book V is carefully designed to prepare Adam for the possibility of melio- ristic ascent from body to spirit that is figured forth so effectively in Milton's springing tree. This tree, then, serves not only as metaphor and ‘model for the nature of Nature but as a powerful and central moral symbol, the culmination of a consciously developed pattern, which intro- duces Adam to the possibility for human development and affirms its contingency on obedience to God. As early as The Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty (1642), Milton observes that God had carefully ranked and positioned the angels in the heavenly region from the time of their creation and that a similar but less perfect discipline and order extends to the “state also of the blessed in paradise.”? In Paradise Lost this fixity of creation in the celestial spheres is forcefully asserted in the forms of address to angelic audiences used by three different speakers on three different occasions in Book V: “Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers” is the salutation repeated by God (1. 601), Satan (J. 772), and finally Abdiel (1 840) in his refutation of Satan's “argument blasphemous, false and proud!” And, as if to reify the idea of hierarchical rigidity in the celestial sphere, the epic narrator describes the angelic hosts bearing ‘Ten thousand thousand Ensigns high advanc’d, Standards and Gonfalons, twixt Van and Rear Stream in the Air, and for distinction serve Of Hierarchies, of Orders, and Degrees; (V, 588-91) ‘Over these legions Christ is appointed “Head” (V, 606). Later Satan is described as “great indeed / fin] name, and high was his degree in Heav’n” (¥, 706-7); proud and jealous of his power, itis to his advantage that he should espouse a political doctrine in which hierarchical order is not incompatible with freedom. Included in the self-serving propaganda which Satan disseminates among his followers is the statement that “Orders and Degrees / Jar not with liberty, but well consist” (V, 792-93); however, as ‘Abdiel quickly notes, such a position is indeed ironic for one who places himself “so high above [his] Peers” (V, 812). The faithful angel then continues to expose Satan's sophistry by reminding him of his position as a dependent being (V, 822-25). ‘Thus from the moment of Christ's exaltation, Satan's growing pride >In Reason of Church Government, Milton states that the anges, as described by the apostle John (Rev. 7-8), “are distinguished and quarternioned into their celestial prince dloms and sateapies, according a8 Gad himself hath writ his imperial decrees through tke ‘great provinces of teaven, The sate also ofthe blessed in paradise, though neverso perfec, i not therefore left without discipline” (Milton, 642).Jean d’Espagnet 605 and envy are stimulated by his acute awareness of heavenly hierarchy and degree and the threat of greater servitude, The Lord of the North scarn- fully envisions the progress of “The great Messiah, ... / Who speedily through all the Hierarchies / Intends to pass triumphant, and give Laws” (¥, 691-93). He and his rebellious comrades fly among “the mighty Re- gencies / Of Seraphim and Potentates and Thrones / In thir triple De- grees" (V, 748-50) en route to the lofty throne marked by the “great Hierarchal Standard” (V, 701), from which Satan will address his legions. Finally, Abdiel again reminds Satan (and in terms that cannot fail to ‘exacerbate his sense of injured merit) of his ontological status: As by his Word the mighty Father made All things, ev'a thee, and all the Spirits of Heav'n By him created in thir bright degrees, CCrown'd them with Glory, and to thir Glory nam’d Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers. (V, 836-40) But for man the situation is very different. Throughout Book V, Milton ‘outlines an ontology and cosmology in which, unlike the celestial scheme, the steps and gradations of creation—if they exist at all—are comforting and reassuring in their gradualness.“ For example, one of the effects of the morning hymn of praise is to blur sharp boundaries between the celestial and terrestrial spheres which might otherwise prove inhibiting to the upward aspirations of Adam and Eve. Here the entire scale of cre- ation—angels, sun, moon, fixed stars and planets, the forces of nature, and the earthly creatures—joins Adam and Eve in a common act of praise for the Creator's “goodness beyond thought, and Power Divine” (V, 159). ‘Thus, through the intermingling of different. categories of creation, we find, early in the book, a clear foreshadowing of Raphael's later, explicitly melioristic position. Further in the hymn, Milton’s description of the four elements “that in quaternion run / Perpetual Circle” (V, 181-82) with its emphasis on their interconvertibility and “ceaseless change” provides the metaphysical foundation for a dynamic universe of motion, fluidity, and continual flux, a setting in which human transformation and ascent are entirely possible. As certain of Milton's editors have noted, it is a meta- physics closely patterned after Plato's Timaeus, 49, c: A, again, when inflamed, becomes fie, and, again, Cire, when condensed and “The Renaissance view ofa clase and unbroken ordering ofthe scale of nature, which is, in par, the foundation for Milton's meliorism, is discussed at some length in C. A. Parides, Milton and the Chrittion Tradition (Oxford, 1966), 60-68; however, Patcides notes only that Milton acknowledges the existence of “orders” and “degrees” in heaven (64), More to the point of my discussion, A. O. Lovejoy (The Great Chatr of Being [1936 rpt. New York, 1960), states that “the graded series of creatures down which the divine lite in its overflow had descended might be conceived to constitute also the stages of mats aseent to the divine life in its selFeomtsined completeness" (89),606 Stanton J. Linden ‘extinguished, passes once more into the form of air, and once more, air, when collected and condensed, produces cloud and mist—and from these, when still, ‘more compressed, comes flowing water, and from water comes carth and stones, once more~nand thus generation appears to be transmitted from one to the other in a cirele.* ‘That the demarcations between the celestial and terrestrial spheres ate greatly relaxed in contrast to distinctions between angelic orders is shown in Raphael's unimpeded descent to converse “as friend with friend” with Adam, However, cosmic and ontological fluidity is more subtly demon- strated in the account of the paradisiacal luncheon which follows. We note, for example, how the question of the suitability of human food for angelic constitutions leads to Raphael's exposition of their common spiritual essence and faculties of sense: “both [angets and humans] con- tain / Within them every lower faculty / Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste, / Tasting concoct, digest, assimilate, / And corpo- real ta incorporeal turn” (V, 409-13). Following these direct foreshadow- ings of the “nutritive” images in the ontological tree section (I. 475-84), Raphael's further insistence on the commonality af sensory experience, the fact that all creation requires nutrition, is supported by the idea that in the elemental world, “the grosser feeds the purer” (V, 416), or through the example of ‘The Sun that light imparts to all, {which} receives From all his alimental recompense In humid exhalations, and at Even Sups with the Qcean: (V, 423-26) Moving easily from the great world to the lesser and from the realm of nature ta the human sphere but sharpening always his focus on matters of greatest spiritual import for Adam and Eve, Milton employs alchemical ‘metaphor in describing the eating of the meal at once to erase barriers ‘between seemingly opposing categories and to suggest the possibility of 5 For exemple, Hughes, Milton, 306n, cites this passage feom the Timacus, which T ‘quote from the translation of Benjamin Jowett, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. Faith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (New York, 1961), 1176. On the relationship ‘beeween motion, multiplicity, and the theme of praise in the morning hymn, see chapter three im Joseph FL. Summers, The Muse's Mechod (Cambridge, Mass, 1962). In his valuable discussion of Neaplatonic resonances in Paradise Last, Book V, 469-86, William G, Mad sen (From Shadowy Types to Truzh [New Haven and London, 1968], 120) notes that “Some words suggest that che scale of nature is dynamic... but atthe same time it appears 10 ‘be state.” Madsen does not suggest, however, what I Usink to be tke case: thar within the entice scale of creation, dynamism is largely confined to the terrestsial world and its interaction with the celetiak the positions of the celestial beings within thelr proper sphere is much mote rigidJean d'Espagnet 07 upward mobility. Raphael’s consumption of human food, we are told, is not figurative but incontrovertibly real: So down they sat, ‘And to thir viands fell, nor seemingly ‘The Angel, nor in mist, the common gloss OF Theologians, but with keen dispatch OF real hunger, and concoetive heat To transubstantiate; what redounds, transpires Through Spirits with ease; nor wonder; if by fire OF sooty coal the Empirie Alchemist Can tum, of holds it possible to turn Metals of drossiest Ore to perfet Gold AS from the Mine. (V, 433-43) Milton’s conception of the digestive process—the “transubstantiation” of “baser” food to more precious “vital spirit” through the agency of “concoctive heat"'—is imaged with great vividness and precision in the metaphor of alchemical transmutation. As ina similar image in Espagnet's Enchyridion, both vehicle and tenor establish, by means of a fluid and dynamic physiology, the possibility of evolutionary progress fram corpo- real to spiritual in unfallen man. Having set forth for Adam “‘the scale of Nature .. / From centre to circumference,” Raphael proceeds with his famous account of creation and the first matter: © Adam, one Almighty is frome whom All things proceed, and up to him return, Ih not deprav’é from good, created all Such to perfection, one first matter all, Indu'd with various forms, various degrees ‘Of substance, and in things that live, of life; Bot more refin'é, more spiritous, and pure, ‘As nearer to him plac’t or nearer cendin; Each in thir several active Spheres assig Till body up to spirit work, in bounds Proportion’d to each kind. So from the root Springs lighter che green stalk, from thence the leaves More aery, last the bright consummate flow'r Spirits odorous breathes: flow's and thir frait Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublim'd To vita spirits aspire, (V, 469-84, emphasis sine) Besides their concern with the metaphysics and ontology of this passage, scholars have given considerable attention to its imagistic sources and analogues. Generally acknowledged, for example, is the Neoplatonic con- ception of the creative act, with its rhythm of emanation and return in Il608 Stanton J. Linden 469-70,8 and a variety of possible sources for the tree analogy have been. located in works by Duns Scotus, Mercator, and Robert Fludd.” ‘Among authors who have not previously entered discussions of the provenance of Raphael's ontological tree is the seventeenth-century French hermetic, scientific, and philosophical writer, Jean 4’Espagnet, whose Enchyridion Physicae Restitwiae contains parallel ideas and images remarkably close to Milton’s description; it also includes brief treatments of other topics of central or secondary importance in Paradise Last. About Espagnet, himself, there is much uncertainty, and John Ferguson stated long ago that his life “is nearly as great an Arcanum as that of which he ‘has attempted the revelation."* Ferguson's brief biographical account, which depends on earlier authorities and should be supplemented by Lynn Thorndike and, especially, Thomas $. Willard,” notes that Espagnet's works appear under the imperfect anagrams “Penes nas unda Tag” (I come from the waters of the Tagus) and "'Spes mea est in Agno” (My faith is in the Lamb), that he is reputed to have been either “a senator of the parliament of Toulouse” or a city official of Bordeaux, and that his authorship or editorship of certain of the works which pass under his ‘name is disputable. '° The scant autobiographical material included in the Enchyridion sheds some additional light: Espagnet reports having recently “withdrawn my self from publick employments,” leaving behind the “dangerous attendants of a Courtier’s life” and, most tellingly, now taking refuge in “the Sanctuarie, the Studie of the Occult, and almost unscarch- See Madsen, 113-24. Especially applicable to Milton's passage are the lines on human indeterminacy which Madsen cites ftom Pico's Oration on the Dignily of Mam: “The nature ‘of all ather beings is limited and constrained within the bounds of laws prescribed by [God]. [Adaml, constrained by no limits in accordance with thine own tree will in whose hand We have placed thee, shalt ordain for thyself the limits of thy nature” (118). “Important discussions of possible sources ofthis image appear in Kester Svendsen, Milton and Sconce (Cambridge, Mas., 1956), 114-15, where a similar tree image from Mercstor’s Historia Mundi is discussed; in Walter Clyde Curry, Milton's Ontology, Cas- ‘mogony and Physics (Lexington, 1957), Chapter 7, especially 167-71, 223n, where a source in Duns Scotus is proposed; and Wiliam Brennan, “Robert Fludd as a Possible Source (or Paradise Lost, V_ 469-470," Mitton Quarerly, (5 (1981, 95-97, where, expanding on ideas proposed by Denis Saurat, a motto and engraving from Fludd’s Moncchordum ‘mundi ace suggested sources for the opening “Neaplatonic” movement ofthe Creator in ‘Milton's passage. Drawing on both biblical iconography and Neoplatonic thought, Jona- (Gan Goldberg's “Virga Tesse: Analogy, Typology, and Anagogy in a Miltonic Simile,” Milton Studies, V (1973), 177-90, also contains valuable commentary. ‘Biographical information on Espagnet ia derived from the brief sketch included in John Ferguton, Bibllosheca Chemica (2 vols., 1906; rpt. London, $954), {, 249-80 * See Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, VI, 386-89, and Thomas 8, Willard, "From Witch Trial to New Science: The ‘Concealed Author’ of the Hermetic Arcanum, Cauda Pavonis: Studies in Hermeticlim, 10 (1991), 25 % See Bibliotheca Chemica, 1, 249-50Jean d'Espagnet 609 able Laws and Customes of Nature in the Universe." While the true cause of Espagnet’s retirement from public service cannot definitely be known, Willard theorizes that it may have resulted from his reluctance to become involved in current Reformationist conflicts within the Roman Catholic Church and in the witch and sorcery trials that public office ‘would have required. Such an atmosphere would have been particularly threatening to one who, like Espagnet, was reading alchemical authors and writing alchemical books. Raymond Lull, Michael Maier, Sendivog- ius, and in all probability Paracelsus and the current Rosicrucian furor were of special interest to Espagnet; and the Enchyridion frequently invokes the name of Hermes Trismegistus. Ferguson's claim that the Enchyridion is “the first treatise in France ‘which was [written] in opposition to the physics of Aristotle”? is in part supported by the position of intellectual independence set forth in “The Authours Epistle.” Here Espagnet's appeal to the reader is couched in terms that Francis Bacon and quite possibly Milton would have found ‘congenial ‘Yet let me have this Boon granted, that if you will be competent or just Judges, let nat the swoln names of Plato, Aristotle and of any other prime Philosophers, be summoned as convicting witnesses; or empannell'd as a condemning Jury, but Jay aside theic nominal, though seemingly real authority, and bind not your souls to a continued etedulity of their positions; but preserve your Souls free to your selves. (“Authors Epistle") Despite this insistence on independence of judgment, the 244 brief chap- ters that comprise the Enchyridion are often inconsistent with the subject matter or spirit of the emerging empirical science. Espagnet's topics in- clude the imaging of God as light (p. 2), the existence of a Platonic anima ‘mmundi (p. 4), the tripartite division of the universe into the super-celestial, celestial, and terrestrial regions (p. 6), the hexameral account of the ‘world’s ereation (pp. 13-28), the nature of the first matter (pp. 28-29), ‘man as microcosm, the influence of the greater world on the lesser, the ¢ria prima, as well as the conflicting claims of the geocentric and heliocentric. systenss. Thus, far from being even modestly original, many of Espagnet’s subjects are thoroughly traditional and conventional according to the canons of medieval and Renaissance topicality. In short, the Enchyridion combines old learning with new; while advancing the position of liberation from authority, it also belongs to the encyclopedic tradition with other compendia of popular knowledge, such as Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De " $ce “The Authours Rpistle. To the Honourers of Natural Light," preceding the 1651 edition of the Enchyridion, sigs. A4-A5, ° Wilacd, 4. For additional information on Espagnet, se the Intcoduction to Willard’ forthcoming edition ofthe eaclest English translations ofthe Enchyridion Physieae Restiew- tae and the Arcantom Hermeticue Philosophiae Opus. Bibliatheca Chemica, 1, 250.610 Stanton J. Linden Proprietatibus Rerum: Caxton’s translation from the French, The Mirrour of the World; Stephen Batman's Batman uppon Bartholomew, and la Primaudaye’s The French Academie. The Enchyridion’s inclusion in this tradition is important because, as Kester Svendsen has pointed out, the vernacular encyclopedias of science popular in the Middle Ages and Renais- sance constitute a most significant portion of the background against which Milton's work should be studied; [and] the bulk of Milton’s science is, properly speaking, the traditional heritage of the seventeenth century from the Middle Ages, as illustrated by the encyclopedias of science.'* Given Milton’s predisposition to draw upon such sources, it is significant that a number of topics which appear in the Enchyridion are also found concentrated in the “scientific” sections of Books V, VII, and VIII of Paradise Lost. For example, Espagnet’s discussion of the plurality of heavenly bodies and the passibility of multiple worlds (quoted below) may bbe reflected in the celestial choir’s description of the “new-made World, ... / OF amplitude almost immense, with Stars / Numerous, and every Star perhaps a World / Of destin'd habitation” (VII, 617, 620-22). Though Espagnet presents his material ftom a decidedly postlapsarian viewpoint, section 241 recalls not only in subject matter the scientific and astronomi- cal conversations of Raphael and Adam but also the theological implica- tions and tone of moral authority that inform them. Further, in both Espagnet and Milton’s scientific dialogues we find a similar, freely- structured dialectical movement, one that in its emphasis on careful choice between weaker and stronger alternatives provides a ratiocinative model for the attainment of a higher truth. In the following passage Espagnet's balanced syntax (“They which believe... are deceived”; “for reason will denie”; “Is it not rather more likely”; “These .. . do joyn ... to make up a perfect harmonie in the Universe") has its Miltonic counterpart in the disarming case and spontaneity with which Raphael and Adam discourse on planetary matters which are of momentous moral and theological significance: They which believe that an almost innumerable multitude of heavenly bodies, were created for the commoditie ofthe globe of the Earth, and for her inhabitants, as to their propex end, are deceived, for reason will denie, that natures, so far more noble and transcendent, were enslaved to the service of more vile and Tow-born Beings. Is it not rather more likely, that every Globe doth eather of it self make a peculiar world, and that so many worlds as feodaries to the eternal Empire of a Gad, are diffused through the vast range of the heaven, and there do hang as bound each to the other by that common bond of the heaven, and that the whole large Universe doth consist of those manifold natures? These, though so far severed in nature and place, yet do joym in a mutual Love, so as to make up a perfect harmonie in the Universe, (sec, 241, pp. 162-63) “Mitton and the Eneyclopedias of Science," Studies in Philology, 39 (1942), 303-4,Jean d’Espagnet eit However, Milton’s discussion of astronomy in the first 178 lines of Book VIII contains parallels in thought and phrasing to section 242 of the Enchyridion that are much more remarkable in their closeness. These have mainly to do with the grounds for classifying the earth and moon as stars, with the question of the earth’s motion, with the possibility of inhabitants on the moon, with God's “economy”’in the design of creation, and with the visible world as cause for praise of the Creator's wisdom and glory. Espagnet’s astronomical discussion continues: What hinders, but that we may reckon the Globe of the Earth, as well as the Moon amangst the Stars? For both are naturally dark bodies, bath do barrow light from the Sun, both are solid bodies, and refleet the beams of the Sun, both send forth spirits and virtues, both hang in their heaven or their air. But the doubt is, whether it moves or no. But to What end is her motion necdfull? why may not she also stand fixt amongst $0 many fist bodies? And it may be the Moon hath her inhabitants, for it isnot credible, that Orbs of so immense and vast a compass, should be idle and useless, not inhabited by any ereatures; that their motions, actions, and travels should onely tend to the good of this lowest and most despicable Globe: since God himself, not liking Solitude, did go out of himself in the Creation, and poured out himself upon the creatures, and gave them a Law for Multiplication, (sec. 242, p. 164) With this passage as the primary point of reference, we find that Espag- net’s categorization of the earth and moon as stars because of their “natu- rall” darkness, solidity, borrowing of the sun’s light, and reflective capabit- ities suggests Milton’s description of the stars’ function to supply officiate,” VIII, 22) light to the tiny, dark, and stationary earth, “a spot, a grain, / An Atom, ... this opacous Earth, this punctual spot” (VIII, 17-18, 23). Or again, Espagnet’s idea of the moon’s star-like nature and its earth-like solidity has a direct paratlel in Milton’s description of the transmission of the earth’s reflected light to the “terrestrial moon”: ‘What if thae light Sent fram her [the earth] through the wide transpicuous air, To the terrestrial Moon be as a Star Enlight’ning her by Day, as she by Night ‘This Barth? reciprocal, if Land be there, Fields and Inhabitants: (VIII, 140-45) Other astronomical correspondences abound in these sections of the two works. Raphael’s speculation about lunar habitation at the end of this quotation finds close resemblance in Espagnet’s “And it may be the Moon. hath her inhabitants,” just as his question about “whether Heav'n move or Earth, / Imports not,” (VIET, 70-71), has a nearly exact counterpart in Espagnet’s “Whether (the earth] moves or no.” Finally, the Neoplatonic motion and rhythm of Milton's Creator, the “one Almighty ... from whom / All things proceed, and up to him return” (V, 469-70), strongly612 Stanton J. Linden recalls the emanation and return of Espagnet’s God, who, “not liking Solitude, did go out of himself in the Creation, and poured out himself upon the creatures, and gave them a Law for Multiplication” (164). While I cannot prove that Milton is here drawing directly upon the Enchyridion, the number of such parallels and the similarities in descrip- tive detail and even phrasing are persuasive evidence of this possibility But in addition to these resemblances, other sections of the epic are also linked to the French author through more general similarities in theme, tone, and moral emphasis. The point of Raphael's answers to Adam's “reasoning” and “admirings” about “How Nature wise and frugal could commit / Such disproportions, with superfluous hand / So many nobter Bodies to create” (VII, 25-28) is to teach Adam to read creation aright so that he will understand that “Heav'n's wide Circuit” bespeaks the “Maker's high magnificence, who built /So spacious, and his Line stretcht out so far, / That Man may know he dwells not in his own” (VII, 400-103). Therefore “right knowledge,” that which is essential to Adam’s spiritual well being, involves second causes only insofar as they direct man’s thoughts to the first cause and thereby inspire praise and obedience: “be lowly wise” is Raphael’s injunction to Adam, “Dream not of other Worlds, what Creatures there / Live, in what state, condition or degree” (VIII, 173-76). Although the attitude toward the possibility of extracerres- trial life in the corresponding section of the Enchyridion is nearly opposite, Espagnet’s reading in the created “Book of God” yields a theological truth and a moral imperative that are identical to Milton’s: Is it not more for Gods glorie, o assert the intire Fabrick of the whole Universe to be like a great Empire, graced with the various natures of many worlds, as with so many Provinces or Cities? and that the Worlds themselves are as sa many habitations & tenements for innumerable Citizens of divers kinds, and all exeated (o set forth the superlative glorie ofthe great Creatour. (p. 165), Even more central to Raphael's watnings to Adam as well as to the ‘overall theme of Paradise Lost, section 244 of the Enchyridion alludes to the fall as resulting from Adam's being “too curious of knowledge,” a condition still evident in his descendents’ “sinfull desire of a forbidden. knowledge.” In consequence of this sin, man has lost “the pleasures of Paradise, the delights of knowledge, the knowledge of Nature and heav- cenly things” (166). However, the closest and most interesting parallels in Espagnet are to Raphael's ontological tree and its immediate context in Book V. I quote the two relevant sections in their entirety 242, Rarefaction and condensation are the two instruments of Nature, by which, spirits are converted into bodies, and bodies into spirits, or also by which corpo- real Elements are changed into spiritual Beings, and spiritual into corporeal; for Elements do suffer these changes in mixt bodies, So the Earth doth ministerJean d'Espagnet 613 spiritual food tothe root of vegetables, which betns fed upon, doth go into the stalk the bark, the boughs, the branches the lows, and into the corporeal substance. The. same is done by Nature in Animals, For the meat and drink, which they diet on, frat least the better part, is terminated into humours, and at length into spirits, ‘which getting through the pores, and knit ¢o the flesh, nerves, bones, and the rest of the parts ofthe bodie, do nourish and augment them, and do by the never-tired ‘work of supply, repair decaying nature. So the spiritual and the portion of the ‘purer substance, is curdled to the frothie bodie of feed. Art the Ape of Nature, doth experience the like in her resolutions and compesition. 213, The life of individuals is in a rational and strict union of the matter and form: but the knot of both natures, their tie and base lieth hid in the fortified ‘embraces of the innate heat and fie, and the radical moisture. For that formal fire is an heavenly ray, which is united with the radical moisture, which is the ‘Purest and best digested portion of the matter, and as it were ar oyl defaecated, exuberated, and turned as it were into a spiritual nature, by the organs of Nature, as by so many Alembicks. (pp. 144-45, emphasis mine) It is immediately apparent that here the correspondences to Milton's ontological tree passage consist in far more than the imagery of nutritive physiology, to which T have added emphasis. Like the increasing “refine- ment,” “spiritousness,” and “purity” (V, 475) that charactesize Milton's forms and degrees of prime matter as they extend upward on the chain of being toward their Creator, Espagnet’s wholly natural processes of “rarefaction and condensation” effect a similar conversion fram corporeal ‘to spiritual or in the opposite direction, Its interesting to note that Robert, Fludd, whose ideas on materialism have sometimes been thought to under- lie Milton's metaphysics in Book V, also emphasizes the importance of these two processes in the creation and hierarchical structuring of nature. '= ‘The relationship between prime matter and form had been the subject of an earlier section of the Enchyridion, and Espagnet’s comments provide a gloss equally valuable for the section just quoted as for Raphael's speech to Adam. The “copulation” of these two “first principles” of Nature, In his Mosaicall Philosophy (Latin, 1634; English erans, 1659), Fludd states that condensation and rarefaction are “the means whereof, all things in this world are made 1 difer from one anther, and are disposed and ordered by God, according to weight, number, and measure, in their proper rancks and places” (58). On similarities in the creation views of Fludal and Milton, see A. $. P. Woodhouse, “Notes on Milton's Views fon the Creation: The Initial Phases," Philologica! Quarterly, 28 (1949), 221-27. The chief proponent of Fluddean influences on Milton, now generally discredited, was Denis Saurat; see his Milion: Man and Thinker (New York, 1925), 301-9. Saurat provides the only comment (323n) [have seen on Espagne in a study of Milton: "In Feance, ean d'Espagnet, 1 Bordeaux magistrate (chirdion, 1647), represents Fludd’s stage of evolution in a much mote concise and ltecary form.” Ibis conceivable thatthe alleged influence of Fludd ‘on Milton was actually that of Espagnet or of Fludd as mediated by Espagnet. The latest bbook on Fludd's relation to his intellectual miliew is William H. Huffman, Roborr Fludd ‘and the End of the Renaissance (New York, 1988),614 Stanton J. Linden Espagnet asserts, produces the elements, which “are nothing else but the first matter diversly informed” (ef. Milton’s “one first matter all, / Indu’d with various forms,” Il. 472-73), and these elements are the stuff of cre- ation in the natural world (pp. 28-29). Unlike Milton, however, Espagnet emphasizes the differing “degrees” of the elements resulting from the marriage of prime matter and form, variations produced in consequence of the particular form with which matter happens to be indued: By the Elements of Nature, are denoted the material principles, of which some have a greater purity and perfection than others, according to the greater Power and Virtue of that form that gives the compleatment. They are for the most part distinguished according to their rarity or density, so that those that are more thin, and approach nearer to a spiritual substance, are therefore the more pure and light, and so are the more fit for motion and action. (sec. $6, pp. 34-39) Except for Espagnet’s attribution of degrees of perfection and purity in the elements (cf. PL, V, 472, 475) to the quality of the endowing form rather than proximity to their source and the absence of Milton’s moral imperative, “If not deprav'd from good” (V, 471), the two passages are very similar in their metaphysical conceptions. Furthermore, in both ‘works this potential for transformation ftom corporeal to spiritual (and also, for Milton, the opposite, if we recall the carlier Corus)" extends throughout the natural world: in vegetables and animals for Espagnet; for Milton, “in bounds / Proportion’d to each kind.” Most striking, finally, are the resemblances in the arboreal imagery used by cach writer to describe this spiritualization process, While for Milton the source of the tree’s spiritual sustenance is above in the “one Almighty,” his description of the ascending nutritive movement from ‘oot, to the green stalk, to airy leaves, to the “bright consummate flow'e” and fruit, “Man's nourishment,” is virtually identical to Espagnet's pat- tern of vegetable nutrition: the spiritual food entering the roots, the stalk, bark, boughs, branches and flowers for the purpose of “repairfing] de- caying nature.”"” Or, in the animal world, the process provides food to “nourish and augment” the corporeal, producing, in Milton’s loftier "Cf. Comus, I, 463-69; “but when lust / By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, / But most by lewd and lavish act of sin, / Lets im defilement to the inward parts, / ‘The soul grows clotted by contagion, / Imbodies and imbruces, till she quite lose / The divine property of her first being." While Ta not claim that Milton's ontological tree shows direct influence of the kabbalistic tradition, it should be noted that althaugh deseribed from “ground up,” its roots are fed from the heavenly source above. On the inverted kabbalistic tee, see Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York, 1974), esp. 106, 119, 171, 312-14. Later inthe Enchyridion, Espognet also reveals awareness of the inverted “tre of the Sefirot" of kabbalistie Iitera- ture; he states that “These mixt badies have the roots of theit generation and lie in Heaven, from whence springs their Causes and Principles, whence also as inverted Tress, they do suck their juice and aliment” (125),Jean d’Espagner 615 expression, “Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublim’d.””* Like Mil- ton's “Empiric Alchemist” with “fire / Of sooty coal” (V, 439-40), Espag- net’s alimental transmutation is concocted in the alembic of nature. While it is interesting that Espagnct and Milton should present ideas about the production of nourishment and increasing spiritousness through use of the tree image, it is quite remarkable, T think, that both should, within these narrow contexts, combine such similar ideas and images with, alchemy. Quite apart from his serious belief in the hermetic arts, Espagnet, like Milton, was attracted to alchemy because of its metaphoric versatility and richness, and his use of it in explaining the processes of nature extends beyond section 213 previously cited.'® ‘The question of the influence of Jean d’Espagnet’s Fnchpridion upon certain passages in Paradise Last (and the case cannot, of course, be proven conclusively), is important for at least two reasons. If it did occur, it shows Milton again drawing significantly upon a popular but previously unnoticed work in the encyclopedic tradition but one written by a contem- porary author who was fom France, a country and culture in which ‘Milton is usually thought to have had limited interest. Furthermore, the Enchyridion analogucs provide, 1 think, the closest parallels of idea and. image that we have to the ontological tree section in Book V; they are an instance of Milton's creative adaptation of what must have been essentially ‘congenial scientific and philosophical materials to the moral and theologi- cal requirements of the conversation between Raphael and Adam and to the larger demands of the epic. Washington State University. " Raphael's insistence, noted eater, tha all creation requiees nutrition (V, 407-9), is ‘emphatically supported by Espagnet: “Whatsoever lives either an Animal or Vegetable Ii, stands in need of food, hat the nauural spirits might be recruited, which do continvally ‘lide forth through the pores, and that so the loss of Nature might have a successive repair (126). "In section no. 78, for example, the alembie and the process of distilaion serve in describing atmospheric phenomena: “The lower Region of the Air i like umto the neck. ‘or higher part of an Alembick, for theough it the vapours climbing up, and being brought to the top, receive their condensation from Cold, and being resolved into water, fll down by reason of their own weight. Sa Nature thraugh eantinued distillations by sublimation ‘of the Water, by cohobation, or by often drawing off the liquour being often poured on, the hody doth reetife and abound it. In these operations of Nature, the Barth isthe Vessel receiving” (p. 52)