Democritus Platonissans (1646‪)‬

Classic poem by an English philosopher of the Cambridge Platonist school. According to the Introduction: " Henry More (1614-1687), the most interesting member of that group traditionally known as the Cambridge Platonists, lived conscientiously and well. Having early set out on one course, he never thought to change it; he devoted his whole life to the joy of celebrating, again and again, "a firm and unshaken Belief of the Existence of GOD . . . , a God infinitely Good, as well as infinitely Great . . . ."Such faith was for More the starting point of his rational understanding: "with the most fervent Prayers" he beseeched God, in his autobiographical "Praefatio Generalissima," "to set me free from the dark Chains, and this so sordid Captivity of my own Will." More offered to faith all which his reason could know, and so it happened that he "was got into a most Joyous and Lucid State of Mind," something quite ineffable; to preserve these "Sensations and Experiences of my own Soul," he wrote "a pretty full Poem call'd Psychozoia" (or A Christiano-Platonicall display of Life), an exercise begun about 1640 and designed for no audience but himself.