Ralph Cudworth, God, Mind and Nature

Abstract

The frontispiece of Ralph Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the Universe presents in visual summary, the classification of ancient philosophers into theists and atheists which occupies the book’s nine hundred pages. The theists are represented by Pythagoras, Aristotle and Socrates, grouped on the left, with their eyes or hands directed heavenwards. The atheists represented by Anaximander, Epicurus and Strato are ranged on the right-hand side, with their attention on anything but heaven. To this day Cudworth’s repetitious and forbiddingly learned tome is remembered for its arguments against atheism. The True Intellectual System exemplifies rational religious apologetics in action: the erudite fashioning of arguments drawn from the whole of history, including antique atheism and contemporary natural philosophy to beat the unbeliever ‘at his own weapon’.1 The title of the abbreviated re-issue of the work by Thomas Wise in 1706 underlines the work’ s apologetic character: A Confutation of the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism.