Essay Review: “Books & How to Use Them”: Generall Learning: A Seventeenth-Century Treatise on the Formation of the General Scholar by Meric Casaubon

Webster John claimed Casaubon's belief in witches and his opposition to the Royal Society was due to the fact that he “had a long sickness of body, so doubtless he wanted not some distemper of mind”. The displaying of supposed witchcraft… (London, 1677), 4. Ironically, Casaubon had already analysed madness in A treatise concerning enthusiasme, as it is an effect of nature (London, 1655). A second, enlarged edition appeared the following year.

Hunter Michael , “Ancients, moderns, philologists and scientists”, Annals of science, xxxix (1982), 187–92, p. 188.

Casaubon's letter to Turner was discovered and published in part by Michael Spiller in “Concerning natural experimental philosophie”: Meric Casaubon and the Royal Society (The Hague, 1980), 195–217.

A letter of Meric Casaubon D.D. & c. to Peter du Moulin D.D. and prebendarie of the same Church: Concerning natural experimental philosophie and some books lately set out about it (Cambridge, 1669); Generall learning , 55 and note 124; Hunter Michael , Science and society in Restoration England (Cambridge, 1981), 139. It is reprinted in Spiller , Concerning (ref. 3), 151–89, with some useful notes.

Casaubon , A letter (ref. 4), 35–36; Glanvill Joseph , Essays on several important subjects in philosophy and religion (London, 1676), sig a3r: Glanvill explicitly contrasts Casaubon's civil dealings with him to the incivilities of Stubbe, and refers to the Letter's suspicions as happily misplaced, and to Casaubon's agreement with Glanvill's main design. He was also pleased by Casaubon's praise for his A philosophical endeavour in the defence of the being of witches and apparitions (London, 1668) in Casaubon's Of credulity and incredulity in things natural, civil and divine (London, 1668), 14.

Generall learning , 90, 186–7; A letter (ref. 4), 4–7.

Grafton Anthony , Defenders of the text (Cambridge, Mass., 1991). In the Letter (ref. 4), 8, Casaubon cites Scaliger as exemplary, in addition of course to Galen and Aristotle. Jean Bodin would be another comparison from the sixteenth century in terms of the interplay of books and experiment: See Blair Ann , The theatre of nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance science (Princeton, 1997), 49–107. John Selden would be a good basis of contemporary comparison; see Feingold Mordechai , “John Selden and the nature of seventeenth-century science”, in In the presence of the past: Essays in honour of Frank Manuel , ed. by Bienvenu R. T. Feingold M. (Dordrecht and Boston, 1991), 55–78. Serjeantson helpfully points to the connections between Edward Stillingfleet and Casaubon, especially Generall learning; 50–51, 58. Isaac Barrow is another comparable figure in some respects; see Grafton Anthony , “Barrow as a scholar” in Feingold M. (ed.), Before Newton (Cambridge, 1990), 291–302, and Stewart Ian G. , “‘Fleshy books’: Isaac Barrow and the oratorical critique of Cartesian natural philosophy”, History of universities, xvi (2000), 35–102.

Serjeantson , Generall learning, 55. An important recent contribution to this difficult area is by Serjeantson, “Testimony and proof in seventeenth-century England”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, xxxi (1999), 195–236, which situates notions of ‘fact’ in Bacon Wilkins Boyle within rhetorical and dialectical disciplines that belonged to the ‘general scholar’, and includes a good survey of previous scholarship on this question.

Casaubon Meric , A treatise of use and custome (London, 1638), 44, 81. On this general feature of English academic natural philosophy in England in the period, see Feingold M. , “The mathematical sciences and new philosophies” in Seventeenth-century Oxford (The history of the University of Oxford, iv; Oxford, 1997), ed. by Tyacke Nicholas , 359–448. The standard Augustinian injunctions that inform Casaubon's stance are surveyed in Mandelbrote Scott , “Isaac Newton and Thomas Burnet: Biblical criticism and the crisis of late seventeenth-century England”, in Force J. Popkin R. (eds), The books of nature and scripture (Dordrecht, 1994), 150–3.

Casaubon , A letter (ref. 4), 22–23; the patristic sources and their early modern uses of this warning are surveyed in Harrison Peter , “Curiosity, forbidden knowledge, and the reformation of natural philosophy in early modern England”, Isis, xci (2001), 265–90. For a reflection on some of Casaubon's concerns see Iliffe Rob , “The masculine birth of time: Temporal frameworks of early modern natural philosophy”, The British journal for the history of science, xxxiii (2000), 427–53.

Generall learning, 185–8. The contemporary text that best epitomizes (literally) Casaubon's understanding of natural philosophy in its broadly Renaissance Aristotelian framework is the jointly authored Thirteen books of natural philosophy (London, 1660), by Daniel Sennert, Nicholas Culpepper and Abdiah Cole.

It is worth noting that in his Principles of Christianity, which served as an introduction to his A discourse concerning Christ his incarnation and exinanition (London, 1646), 8, Casaubon listed this task as one among five principles of the faith. By the time he wrote Generall learning, it had risen apparently to the most important principle.

Generall learning, 92–93. An excellent description of this kind of expertise is tersely summarised in Bono James , The word of God and the languages of man (Wisconsin, 1995), 63.

Generall learning, 188; at note 252 Serjeantson helpfully refers to the commonplace problem, as articulated in Burton's Anatomie of melancholie, for example. For a treatment sensitive to (but not drawing on) Casaubon's concerns, but ironically relative to the “new philosophy”, see Schaffer Simon , “Godly men and mechanical philosophers: Souls and spirits in Restoration natural philosophy”, Science in context, i (1987), 55–85.

Generall learning , 29; as Serjeantson points out, this tag was an adaptation of a phrase Casaubon remembered from his “worthy Friend” John Selden: “magna pars Eruditionis est noscere bonos Libros”, which he quoted in a fascinating letter of 1646 that Serjeantson has appended to Generall learning. Casaubon argued most strongly for a highly individualized view of how such expertise could be passed on to students, preferring the intimacy of oral communication over published advice literature when it concerned “What & to whom, & to what End I recommend any Book”. Generall learning, 195.

Glanvill , Philosophicall endeavour (ref. 5), 4–5. Glanvill's “endeavour” was to explain why such palpably obvious records still were met with incredulity, an effort Casaubon admired as “subtle”, though contrasted with his own “plain” method; Of credulity (ref. 5), 18. Very brief mention of Glanvill's use of Casaubon is made by Jobe Thomas , “The Devil in Restoration science: The Glanvill-Webster witchcraft debate”, Isis lxxii (1981), 343–56, pp. 346–8. For general concerns of the period, Daston Lorraine Park Katherine , Wonders and the order of nature 1150–1700 (New York, 1998), 329–49. Both Glanvill and Casaubon can be located in their use of authorities within the dialectical tradition in and (partly) against which Boyle's literary technology is developed; Serjeantson, “Testimony and proof” (ref. 8).

Generall learning, 93. Casaubon illuminates the complexities of the relations between scholarly work and salvation as treated by Iliffe Rob , “Isaac Newton: Lucatello Professor of Mathematics”, in Lawrence Christopher Shapin Steven (eds), Science incarnate: Historical embodiments of natural knowledge (Chicago, 1998), 121–55.

The book was The life of Sister Katherine of Jesus; Nunne of the Order of our Lady (Paris, 1628); Casaubon , A treatise (ref. 1), sig 5v-8r. On the Treatise's, place within discussions of enthusiasm in the period, Michael Heyd, “Descartes — An enthusiast malgré lui?”, in Katz David Israel Jonathan (eds), Sceptics, millenarians and Jews (Leiden, 1990), 35–58. The exception is his De verborum usu, et accuratae eorum cognitiones utilitate, diatriba (London, 1647), which is an introduction addressed to his son (aged 11) to the uses of the study of Greek and Latin for learning the whole encyclopedia of arts and sciences.

Casaubon , A treatise (ref. 1), Alr. In Generall learning, 104, Casaubon highlights the benefits to the general scholar from being “gulled himselfe” by fraudulent texts; Serjeantson's excellent discussion of Casaubon's reference to the Donation of Constantine among other examples is in Generall learning, 33–44.

Casaubon , A treatise (ref. 1), 110–30; the literature on this is vast. A brief summary of the Reformation debate on Dionysius Ps. Froehlich Karlfried , “Ps. Dionysius and the reformation of the sixteenth century”, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The complete works (New York, 1987), 33–46. For an excellent example of how complicated his presence was in seventeenth-century theological and natural philosophical questions from Ficino to Kircher, see Leinkauf Thomas , “Philologie, mystik, metaphysik: Aspekte der Rezeption des Dionysius Areopagita in der frühen Neuzeit”, in Denys l'Aréopagite et sa postérité en orient et en occident (Paris, 1997), 583–609.

Casaubon , A treatise (ref. 1), 110, 112, 113–29.

Generall learning , 104; Casaubon , A treatise (ref. 1), 112. For Pseudo-Dionysian influences on Hooker, for example, see Kirby W. J. Torrance , “The Neoplatonic logic of Richard Hooker's generic division of law”, Renaissance and Reformation, xxii (1998), 49–67; Hankey W. J. , “Augustinian immediacy and Dionysian mediation in John Colet, Edmund Spencer, Richard Hooker and the Cardinal de Bérulle”, in de Courcelles Dominique (ed.), Augustinus in der Neuzeit: Colloque de la Herzog August Bibliothek de Wolfenbüttel (Turnhout, 1998), 125–60. Casaubon relied on Pseudo-Dionysius's being “ancient enough” to cite him in support of a very strong doctrine of episcopal supremacy: The question to whom it belonged anciently to preach (London, 1663), 12–13. For an analogous example of such complications in the efforts of Isaac Barrow to purge readers' minds from neo-Platonic incursions into canonical texts — In this case that of Euclid's Elements — See my “Mathematics as philosophy: Barrow and Proclus”, Dionysius, xviii (2000), 151–82.

Heyd Michael , “Be sober and reasonable”: The critique of enthusiasm in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (Leiden, 1995), 72–92; A treatise (ref. 1), 124.

Casaubon , A treatise (ref. 1), 129; Heyd , “Descartes” (ref. 18); Hatfield Gary , “The senses and the fleshless eye: The Meditations as cognitive exercises”, in Rorty A. O. (ed.), Essays on Descartes' Meditations (Berkeley, 1986), 45–79; Dear Peter , “Mersenne's suggestion: Cartesian meditation and the mathematical model of knowledge in the seventeenth century”, in Ariew R. Grene M. (eds), Descartes and his contemporaries (Chicago, 1995), 50–58.

Casaubon , A treatise (ref. 1), 130; Generall learning, 152, 155, 156, 149, 157. Serjeantson's critical apparatus here is particularly helpful.

Generall learning, 6–8; see also Serjeantson's excellent synoptic presentation of the treatise's structure on pp. 80–81. Spiller also recognized that Casaubon, “with his humanist and antiquarian interests, is concerned with the new philosophy primarily as a cultural phenomenon” ( Concerning (ref. 3), 23); but by excising the whole ‘effects’ section of Generall learning, amongst other things, Spiller denuded it of its scientific character (in Casaubon's understanding of that term).

Crucial background is Grafton , Defenders (ref. 7), Levine Joseph , Battle of the books (Ithaca, 1991), and Feingold M. , “The Humanities”, in Tyacke (ed.), Seventeenth-century Oxford (ref. 9), 211–18.

Casaubon Meric , De nupera Homeri editione Lugduno-Batavica (London, 1659), 3; De verborum usu (ref. 18), 4–5; A letter (ref. 4), 6–7; A true and faithful relation… (London, 1659), 4, 5, 18. Casaubon's frequent diatribes against educational reformers such as Comenius, Dury and Ramus are neatly captured in Generall learning , 166–78, and in Serjeantson's discussion, 45–54. A complete list of Casaubon's thirty-six publications is given in Generall learning, 212–17.

Casaubon Meric , De quatuor linguis commentationis, pars prior: Quae de lingua Hebraica: Et de lingua Saxonica (London, 1650); the only source on this project of Casaubon's is Eros John , “Diachronic linguistic theories in seventeenth-century England, with special attention to the theories of Meric Casaubon” (PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1972), the basis of his “A 17^th-century demonstration of a language relationship: Meric Casaubon on English and Greek”, Historiographia linguistica, iii (1976), 1–13.

Casaubon , Treatise (ref. 9), 84–89.

Casaubon Meric , Of credulity and incredulity in things divine and spiritual (London, 1670), 25–26; see Generall learning , 102–16, and Serjeantson's discussion at pp. 33–37. Casaubon refers especially to Homer in Generall learning, 96–97.

See in this regard Bono , Word of God (ref. 13), and Harrison Peter , The Bible, Protestantism and the rise of natural science (Cambridge, 1998).