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Reserve Text Andrew Milner, from John Milton and the English Revolution Chapter 4: Reason Triumphant In the course of our earlier discussion of the structure of the Revolutionary Independent world vision, we suggested that that structure should be understood, not as a single entity to be grasped synchronically, but rather as a changing entity best grasped in terms of its movemnt, its central pattern of development· We pointed to the existence of an initial set of rationalist categories, which are premised upon, and indeed contain within themselves, a set of essentially optimistic ideological assumptions. And we suggested that this system developed, under the impact of the shock of the Restoration two alternative, but not incompatible, responses to the triumph of un-reason over reason, the one personal and quietistic, the other political and historical. This presents us with a relatively straightforward framework for the analysis of Milton's life-work: a schematisation which is concerned, firstly, with the works of the pre-Restoration period, which express the world vision of an emergent triumphant rationalism, and secondly, with the works written under the Restoration, which express the world vision of reason embattled. |
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Alternative schema are, of course, available. Professor Grierson, for example, claimed to detect a disjuncture in Milton's thought between, as he viewed it, the prophetic writings of the period 1641 to 1654, and the artistic, non-prophetic, writings prior to and antecedent from that period. (1) It seems to us that this particular distinction is somewhat misleading in that it ignores the genuinely political (and prophetic) content of both the three later poems and some, at least, of the earlier poems, Grierson's decision to date the shift from prophecy back to artistry from 1654 also seems to us to be mistaken. Certainly, there is an increasing disillusionment with the revolutionary movement, but, as late as 1660, Milton rallies to its defence in his The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth.(2) And even here there is evidenced a rationalistic optimism which makes the proposals outlined seem, in the given historical context, hopelessly utopian. But, in particular, it seems to us that A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, which was almost certainly written after I654, is, in effect, a [95]
summing up of the whole of Milton's previous intellectual develop- ment. The real shift· in Milton's view of the world comes, we would argue, with the Restoration in r660, and receives artistic expression in the three longer poems, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. Paradise Lost was, of course, probably begun before the Restoration, but it was not published until I667 and, almost certainly, the bulk of it was composed after I660. Furthermore, the work must have entailed a great deal of revision, and so it would seem legitimate to treat it as essentially a post-Restoration work. I intend, therefore, to consider Milton's works as falling into two main phases: those which express the world vision of reason triumphant, and those which express the world vision of reason embattled. In considering each of these two main phases we will necessarily employ slightly different analytical techniques. For, in so far as we are concerned with a sociology of literature, and not merely with a sociology of seventeenth-century English thought, our prime object of study must be the three longer poems. It is the last' poems which, in fact, constitute Milton's major literary legacy. Who, after all, apart from professional scholars, today reads L'Allegro or II Pensero? We shall therefore attempt to develop, in' the next chapter, an account of these three poems which, following Goldmann's methodological prescriptions, conceives of each of them as a literary totality [By contrast, our-analysis of the pre-Restoration writings, in this chapter, will be concerned not so much with an account of each particular work as with a 'reading' of the whole-of those writings intended at elucidating the underlying categories which inform the whole system. And the reasons for adopting these differing approaches should he clear. We are involved, in this chapter, with, to use Goldmann's terms, the process of explanation rather than that of comprehension. The literary objects which we are concerned ultimately to comprehend are Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. But in order to effect that coniprehension it becomes necessary to develop, out of an analysis both of Milton's pre- Rcstoration works and of the central pattern of development of seventeenth-century English history, a model of the Miltonic world vision, the function of which is primarily e3iplanntory. Since our purposes in this chapter are essentially those of sociological explanation, rather than those of literary comprehension, our attention will be mainly focused on the prose writings of the revolutionary pcrio8 itself (I540 - 60), for it is there that the structure of the world vision is elucidated in its most comprehensive form. The poetry of [96] both the pre-revolutionary and the revolutionary periods, and in i particular the former, is certainly interesting from the standpoint of understanding Milton's individual poetic development (i.e. his increasing mastery of problems of poetic technique, etc.). But it does not allow us that same access to Milton's view of the world which is provided by the prose writings. The earlier poems are almost all short poems. In the work of an as yet intellectually immature poet, we could not reasonably expect to find any clear articulation of the complex structure of a world vision in poetry of such length. Furthermore, they are often intended primarily as experiments in: form, and, as such, reveal very little of Milton's own deeper beliefs. The transparent absence of any real emotional commitment to his subject matter in the early On the Death of a Fair Infant, written when Milton was only nineteen, has often been commented on. Many of the earlier poems are simply exercises in the art of poetry, and often unsatisfactory ones at that. Milton himself discarded his unfinished The Passion with the wry observation that its subject; was 'above' his years.'" And his seventh sonnet, written as late as 1632, indicates; Milton's own dissatisfaction with his early poetic achievements: How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stol'n on his wing my three and twentieth year! My hasting days fly on with full career, But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th Since, then, we are concerned with Milton's early writings only in order to construct an account, in this chapter, of the fundamental underlying categories which are essentially those developed prior to 1660, and, in the next chapter, of the specific conjunctural organisation of those categories necessitated by the specific problem of the Restoration, we would argue that a fairly 'cavalier' treatment of the early poetry is here appropriate. In our earlier discussion of rationalism as a world vision, we defined its central categories as, firstly, the discrete rational individual, secondly, freedom from external constraint, and thirdly, freedom from passion. We added that, in the case of Protestant rationalism, God is a present in the world only through the medium of the discrete rational individuals who actually inhabit the world. I intend now to proceed to an examination of the way in which these categories inform and order Milton's system as it developed in the prose writings of the Period I640- 60. The earlier poetry will enter into our analysis only [97] in so far as it sheds some direct light on the nature of that system. We shall, however, also attempt an explanation of both the epistemological and aesthetic principles which derive from Milton's rationalist world vision, Clearly, such an explanation will be of some consider- able value to our analysis of the three longer poems. There remains, of I course, the obvious danger that an exclusive concern, in this chapter, with the prose works of the revolutionary period will result in a partial and therefore necessarily distorting account of the pattern of ' Milton's intellectual development. It might well be objected, for example, that the earlier poetry, rather than merely inadequately.. articulating the same world vision as that expressed in the prose works, actually articulates a different world vision altogether. If this were the case then Milton's rationalism would be a product of the I640s, and of the Revolution itself, rather than of the pre- revolutionary period. Some form of' check' on our hypothesis therefore becomes necessary. We shall, then, conclude this chapter with an account of Comus, the longest of the earlier poems and thus the one which permits the dearest expression of Milton's underlying i value-system, an account designed to test for the presence or absence in the early poetry of those rationalistic categories which inform the prose writings of the revolutionary period. Comus will be, as it were, the litmus paper for this the first part of our experiment in sociologically informed textual analysis. 1 The Discrete Rational Individual As a Christian, Milton, of course, subscribes to the belief that in the beginning there was God, and that God subsequently created man. But the man which God created is characterised, in Milton's view, by his possession of individual reason and free will. This particular conception of man is central to the whole of Milton's polemical writings. It underlies much of his attack on the powers of bishops and presbyters, of regal tyrants and censors. In the Areopagitica, for example, he explicitly argues for promiscuous reading on the grounds that God has entrusted man 'with the gift of reason to be his own chooser'." And this gift is in no sense arbitrary or accidental. Rather, it is of the very essence of man as man: 'Many there be that complain of divine Providence for suffering Adam to transgress. Foolish tongues! when God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but cboosing and he had been else a mere [98] artificial Adam'." The most serious and sustained account of Milton's doctrine of the essential nature of man is to be found, however, not in the earlier polemics, but rather in the work which the poet came to regard as his theological masterpiece, the later Treatise on Christian Doctrine. There Milton attempts to define the precise relationship between divine necessity and human freedom. His solution to this problem needs to be situated against the background of current presbyterian and Calvinist accounts. As we saw earlier, Prynne had maintained, in conventional Calvinist fashion, that the whole of human history, including the election or reprobation of each and every individual, had been predestined by God at the beginning of time. This notion led Prynne necessarily to the conclusion that 'there is not any such free will, any such universal or sufficient grace communicated unto all men, whereby they may repent, believe, or be saved if they will themselves'.(7) Thus, for the Calvinistic Presbyterians, man ceased to be an effective moral actor. For Milton, however, such a solution is entirely unacceptable; were it true, it 'would entirely take away from human affairs all liberty of action, all endeavour and desire to do right'(8) The problem is. nonetheless a serious one: in the face of an omnipotent and omniscient God, there would appear to be very little room for human freedom. Milton's solution is contained in the notion that the omnipotent God deliberately willed human freedom into being, that 'the Deity purposely framed his own decrees with reference to particular circumstances, in order that he might permit free causes to act conformably to that liberty with which he had endued them'.(9) Such a conclusion is only tenable, of course, if one postulates a radical distinction between certainty, on the one hand, which follows from divine omniscience (i.e. prescience), and necessity, on the other, which would follow from divine determinism (i.e. predestination). And Milton explicitly endorses that distinction: 'nothing happens of necessity, because God has foreseen it; but he foresees the event of every action, because he is acquainted with their natural causes, which in pursuance of his own decree, are left at liberty to exert their legitimate influence. Consequently the issue does not depend on God who foresees it, but on him alone who is the object of his foresight." For Milton, then, the outcome of human action, both in this world and the next, is a direct consequence of that action itself and not of any external agency. The divine decree of salvation/damnation is 'universally conditional'" upon human endeavour. In this manner, Milton is able to reconcile his belief in [99] God with the characteristically revolutionary-bourgeois, and Enlightenment, notion of man as agent, as the maker of his world, the shaper of his own destiny, a notion which still finds faint echoes in modern sociological 'action theory'. At one point in the argument, the specifically bourgeois nature of this conception is precisely articulated. in so far as it professes a belief in predestined salvation and damnation, Calvinism, Milton notes, 'cannot avoid attributing to God the character of a respecter of persons, which he so constantly discIaims.(12) Here Milton expresses the central notion contained within the conception of bourgeois right, the notion of free and equal I individuals standing in the face of impersonality, the impersonality of God, of the law, of the democratic process, of the market. It is not God, bus bourgeois society, and more particularly the ideal society as conceived by bourgeois revolutionaries, which is no respecter of- persons, which sweeps aside the particular personal privileges of the - feudal order, and erects in their stead the ideal of impersonal rationality, Thus Milton rescues the notion of the individual man as rational agent from the clutches of Calvinistic determinism. But only at a price, the price paid by God who is reduced to the level of first · cause, an all-knowing spectator, rather than an all-determining participant, in human history. Milton is obviously aware of the dangers inherent in this tationalistic individualism, and he attempts to absolve himself from f the charge of detracting from God's grace by suggesting that 'the I power of willing and believing is either the gift of God, or, so far as it : is inherent in man, partakes not of the nature of merit or of good works, but only of natural faculty'.'(13) Thus salvation is the product, not of human merit per se but of the effective operation of those : faculties which God (or 'nature') planted in man. This particular formula is perfectly adequate to Milton's purposes: it keeps God in the , picture. But, nonetheless, it clearly fails to redress the balance between : activity and passivity in the conception of God's role in the God man relationship. Whether or not God endowed man with his natural ; faculties, it remains true for Milton that man's fate is determined by the · use to which man puts those faculties. And although this strongly anti- I Calvinist emphasis on the importance of human activity in the attainment of salvation is only explicitly formulated in the un- published, and heretical, Christian Doctvine, it is nonetheless present in ; his thought even in the early I630s. The closing lines of At A Solemn Music, for example, are indicative of such a belief: [100] O may we soon again renew that song, And keep in tune with heav n till God ere long To his celestial consort us unite, To live with him, and sing in endless morn of light.'" as;n the T,eatin, reconciliation with God is here seen as conditional upon human activFty, which is represented, in the poem, both symbslically and literally, as a renewal of pre-lapsarian harmony, which 'we' humans may 'soon' achieve. Despite his regular disavowals, Milton is actually committed to an essentially meritocratic theology: the world is made up of discrete rational individuals whose achievements are conditional upon their own efforts. Thus far, we have been concerned with rationalistic individualism as a general philosophical category, and at this level Milton's system reveals a remarkable formal similarity with later explicitly atheistic or agnostic rationalisms, But of course Milton was a Protestant. And,-as we have already noted, rationalistic individualism finds expression in Protestantism generally, and in Milton's work in particular, primarily in the emphasis on individual scriptural interpretation. In his attacks on episcopacy, for example; Milton asserts the right of the individual to personally interpret the scriptures, without any mediation between himself and God. For Milton, the bishops are merely 'a tyrannical crew', (15) the customary practices which they point to in self- justification merely 'the old vomit of your traditions',(16) and the scholastic authorities whom they cite merely whatever 'time, or the heedless hand ofblind chance, hath drawn down from of old to this present, m her huge drag-net, whether fish or sea-weed, shells or shrubs, unpicked, unchosen'.(17) Against all of these Milton pits only this: 'The testimony of what we believe in religion must be such as the conscience may rest on to be infallible and uncorruptible, which is only the word of God."(18) Milton's precise phrasing is here extremely revealing. He argues, not simply that Scripture must be believed in, but rather that: our beliefs must be determined by our consciences, and that our consciences can only really rely upon Scripture. In other words, it is the individual conscience, rather than authority, or even indeed Scripture itself, which is the final arbiter of truth, and, in fact, Milton is actually prepared to discard, or at least to go to extraordinary lengths to explain away, pieces of Scripture to which his conscience cannot subscribe. Thus, for example, in the course of his strenuous advocacy of a liberalisation of the divorce laws, Milton warns that Christ mustn't be taken too literally and suggests, [101] somewhat unconvincingly, that Christ often argues in favour of one excess (in this case, excessively stringent marriage laws) in order to correct another (excessively loose marital behaviour).(l9) Finally, Milton is driven to the remarkable conc2usion that the 'incoherence of such a doctrine',"(20) the doctrine in question being the Biblical account of the Mosaic divorce laws, cannot stand 'against so many other rules and leading principles of religion, of justice, and purity of life'. (21) Just as Scripture is pitted against authority, so conscience is pitted against Scripture. And in the Treatise on Christian Doctrine Milton provides a systematic rationale for such a procedure. 'Under the gospel,' writes Milton, we possess, as it were, a twofold Scripture; one external, which is the written word, and the other internal, which is the Holy Spirit, written in the hearts ofbelievets ... although the external ground which we possess for· our belief at the present day in the written word is highly important...that which is internal, and the peculiar possession of each believer, is far superior to all.(22) His conciusion could not be more explicit: 'everything', including Scripture itself, 'is to be finally referred to the Spirit and the unwritten word'(23) Thus Milton's apparent fundamentalism collapses into a peculiar Miltonic cogito, the proud and lonely self-assertiveness of the new bourgeois man, a man who can take nothing on trust, since all institutions, all authorities, all doctrines, partake in part of the nature of the old feudal society, a man who is guided only by 'that intellectual ray which God hath planted in Us'.(24) The earlier of Milton's polemical pamphlets, in particular, abound with a sense of the almost unlimited capacities of the individual reason. Thus, in An Apology for Smectymnuus, for example, Milton maintains that matters of church government in no way 'exceed tile capacity of a plain artisan'.(25) A congregation will easily be able to determine the competence of its minister, he argues, since 'there will not want in any congregation of this island, that hath not been altogether famished or wholly perverted with prelatish leaven; there will not want divers plain and solid men, that have learned by the experience of a good conscience, what it is to be well-taught'.(26) These early pamphlets in fact evidence an uncharacteristically democratic tone, which is almost certainly the product of a very specific conjuncture, that of the all-embracing Parliamentarian alliance. But, for the main part, Milton's understanding: of individual [102] reason and free will in no way implies a democratic conception of society. Milton believed that all men possess free will, but he did not believe that all men exercise their free will. For Milton man is only freewhen his actions are governed by reason:
Milton held that, in practice, most men choose not to be governed by reason and that: 'It- is not agreeable to the nature of things that such persons ever should-he free.'(28) In Milton's system, then, the sinner, the man who freely chooses to subordinate his reason to his passions, thereby loses his freedom. Thus the world is made up of discrete individuals, each of whom possesses the capacity to exercise free will, whilst at the same time it is factually the case that only some men actually do achieve their freedom, that is, do subordinate their passions to their reason. We find, then, at the core of Milton's system a structure of thought which is essentially that of a characteristically bourgeois 'equality of opportunity' model, in which all men have the same opportunities, but only some take advantage of them. This notion gives rise, as we shall see, to the Miltonic version of the theory of election. |
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