were directed against Hobbes, yet he seems to have regarded him with less than the usual amount of bitterness. More did not, on the whole, view Hobbes as a personification of evil, though at times he approached dangerously close to this position. According to Whewell,[1] the Enchiridion Ethicum was especially designed to counteract "the poison of the Hobbian doctrines"; but the most direct connection between the writings of Hobbes and More is found in the latter's Immortality of the Soul. Another weapon against the Hobbists upon which More placed special reliance was the narration of supernatural occurrences, a belief in which he considered essential to all sound morals and religion. The stories he collected appeared as an appendix to Glanvill's Sadducismus Triumphatus, where he tells with almost pathetic credulity the most startling tales of black dogs, strange voices, and all the other appurtenances of ghostdom.
This love for the mystical was one of More's most striking characteristics. As so often happens, he united with it a strong tendency toward asceticism, which led him to undergo numerous voluntary privations for the sake of greater self-mastery. Yet, in spite of his fasts and visions, he was a man of sound common-sense, who never lost sight of the fact that he was living in a world of men whose interests were as worthy of respect as his own. He was so genial and kindly in his disposition that he did not have an atom of bigotry, and it was impossible for him to conceive that a man could be false to high ideals. He seems to have had an unusual power of winning affection. Hobbes said that, if he ever was obliged to discard his own system, he should adopt that of the Reverend Henry More.[2] Preeminently a student, More was entirely devoid of ambition. He refused preferment after preferment, that he might devote himself to the quiet intellectual pursuits he loved. All through his books one sees the influence of his
- ↑ Lectures on Moral Philosophy in England. Whewell thinks that More does not mention Hobbes's name, but it appears in two passages, bk. iii, ch. i, § 6, and bk. iii, ch. ii, § 15.
- ↑ This story is told in biographical notices of both More and Hobbes, but no authority is given (Tulloch, History of Rational Theology, vol. ii, p. 366).
