Editing Ralph Cudworth (section)

=== Plastic principle ===
The role of nature was one faced by philosophers in the Age of Reason or Enlightenment. The prevailing view was either that of the Church of a personal deity intervening in his creation, producing miracles, or an ancient pantheism (atheism relative to theism) – deity pervading all things and existing in all things. However, the "ideas of an all-embracing providential care of the world and of one universal vital force capable of organizing the world from within."<ref name=Giglioni>{{cite journal|last=Giglioni|first=Guido|title=The cosmoplastic system of the universe: Ralph Cudworth on Stoic naturalism|journal=Revue d'histoire des sciences|year=2008|volume=Tome 61/2|issue=2 |pages=313–331|doi=10.3917/rhs.612.0313 |url=http://www.cairn.info/revue-revue-d-histoire-des-sciences-2008-2-page-313.htm}}</ref>  presented difficulties for philosophers of a spiritual as well as materialistic bent.

Cudworth countered these mechanical, materialistic views of nature in his ''True intellectual system of the universe'' (1678), with the idea of 'the Plastick Life of Nature', a formative principle that contains both substance and the laws of motion, as well as a nisus or direction that accounts for design and goal in the natural world. He was stimulated by the Cartesian idea of the mind as self-consciousness to see God as consciousness. He first analysed four forms of atheism from ancient times to present, and showed that all misunderstood the principle of life and knowledge, which involved unsentient activity and self-consciousness, addressing the tension between theism and atheism, took both the Stoic idea of Divine Reason poured into the world, and the Platonic idea of the world soul (''[[anima mundi]]'') to posit a power that was polaric – "either as a ruling but separate mind or as an informing vital principle – either nous hypercosmios or nous enkosmios.<ref name=Giglioni /> According to the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'':<ref name="1902 Encyc.">{{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica|year=1902|title=Ralph Cudworth|url=http://www.1902encyclopedia.com/C/CUD/ralph-cudworth.html|accessdate=1 August 2012}}</ref>

{{blockquote|It is in connection with the refutation of hylozoic atheism that he brings forward the celebrated hypothesis, which he held in common with More, of a plastic nature,—a substance intermediate between matter and spirit,—a power which prosecutes certain ends but not freely or intelligently,—an instrument by which laws are able to act without the immediate agency of God&nbsp;...}}

All of the atheistic approaches posited nature as unconscious, which for Cudworth was ontologically unsupportable, as a principle that was supposed to be the ultimate source of life and meaning could only be itself self-conscious and knowledgeable, that is, rational, otherwise creation or nature degenerates into inert matter set in motion by random external forces (Coleridge's 'chance whirlings of unproductive particles'). Cudworth saw nature as a vegetative power endowed with plastic (forming) and spermatic (generative) forces, but one with Mind, or a self-conscious knowledge. This idea would later emerge in the Romantic period in German science as [[Johann Friedrich Blumenbach|Blumenbach's ''Bildungstreib'']] (generative power) and the ''Lebenskraft'' (or ''Bildungskraft''). Guido Giglioni writes:<ref name=Giglioni />

{{blockquote|...&nbsp;the life of the universe splits into two principles&nbsp;– the one transcendent and intellectual (« an animalish, sentient and intellectual nature, or a conscious soul and mind, that presided over the whole world »), the other immanent and devoid of perception (« a certain plastic nature, or spermatic principle which was properly the fate of all things »)}}

The essence of atheism for Cudworth was the view that matter was self-active and self-sufficient, whereas for Cudworth the plastic power was unsentient and under the direct control of the universal Mind or ''Logos''. For him atheism, whether mechanical or material could not solve the "phenomenon of nature." Henry More argued that atheism made each substance independent and self-acting such that it 'deified' matter. Cudworth argued that materialism/mechanism reduced "substance to a corporeal entity, its activity to causal determinism, and each single thing to fleeting appearances in a system dominated by material necessity."<ref name=Giglioni />

Cudworth had the idea of a general plastic nature of the world, containing natural laws to keep all of nature, inert and vital in orderly motion, and particular plastic natures in particular entities, which serve as 'Inward Principles' of growth and motion, but ascribes it to the Platonic tradition:<ref name=Smith>{{cite web|last=Smith|first=Justin E. H.|title=The Leibnizian Organism Between Cudworth's Plastic Natures and Locke's Thinking Matter|url=http://www.bib.umontreal.ca/colloqueNE/textes_des_communications/Smith.pdf|publisher=Concordia University, Montreal|accessdate=1 August 2012}}</ref>

{{blockquote|The Platonists seem to affirm both these together, namely that there is a Plastick Nature lodged in all particular Souls of Animals, Brutes, and Men, and also that there is a Plastick or Spermatick Principle of the whole Universe distinct from the Higher Mundane Soul, though subordinate to it. (Cudworth, TIS, p. 165)}}

Further, Cudsworth's plastic principle was also a functional polarity. As he wrote:<ref name=Raiger>{{cite journal|last=Raiger|first=Michael|title=The Intellectual Breeze, the Corporeality of Thought, and the Eolian Harp|journal=Coleridge Bulletin|date=Winter 2002|series=New Series|issue=20|pages=76–84|url=http://www.friendsofcoleridge.com/MembersOnly/CB20Raiger.htm|accessdate=1 August 2012}}</ref>

{{blockquote|The Seminary Reason or Plastick Nature of the Universe opposing the Parts to one another and making them severally Indigent, produces by that means War and Contention. And therefore though it be One, yet notwithstanding it consists of Different and Contrary things. For there being Hostility in its Parts, it is nevertheless Friendly and Agreeable in the Whole; after the same manner as in a Dramatick Poem, Clashings and Contentions are reconciled into one Harmony. And therefore the Seminary or Plastick Nature of the World, may fitly be resembled to the Harmony of Disagreeing things.}}

As another historian notes in conclusion, "Cudworth’s theory of plastic natures is offered as an alternative to the interpretation of all of nature as either governed by blind chance, or, on his understanding of the Malebranchean view, as micro-managed by God."<ref name="Smith"/>

==== Plastic principle and mind ====
Cudworth's plastic principle also involves a theory of mind that is active, that is, God or the Supreme Mind is "the spermatic reason" which gives rise to individual mind and reason. Human mind can also create, and has access to spiritual or super-sensible 'Ideas' in the Platonic sense.<ref name="Stanford"/> Cudworth challenged Hobbesian determinism in arguing that will is not distinct from reason, but a power to act that is internal, and therefore, the voluntary will function involves self-determination, not external compulsion, though we have the power to act either in accordance with God's will or not. Cudworth's 'hegemonikon' (taken from Stoicism) is a function within the soul that combines the higher functions of the soul (voluntary will and reason) on the one hand with the lower animal functions (instinct), and also constitutes the whole person, thus bridging the Cartesian dualism of body and soul or ''psyche'' and ''soma''. This idea provided the basis for a concept of self-awareness and identity of an individual that is self-directed and autonomous, an idea that anticipates John Locke.