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Angels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

George MacDonald Ross
George MacDonald Ross
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
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Extract

My general theme is the extent to which philosophers and others must be taken literally when they have written about angels, or anything else which is no longer generally believed in. However, since the title may perhaps have aroused expectations of angels dancing on points of needles, I shall take as my point of departure the question of whether or not the scholastics ever discussed how many angels could dance on the point of a needle. The answer would in fact seem to be in the negative, the closest parallel being found in the anonymous fourteenth-century mystical treatise Swester Katrei, which refers to a thousand souls in heaven sitting on the point of a needle.

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Articles
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Philosophy , Volume 60 , Issue 234 , October 1985 , pp. 495 - 511
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Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1985

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References

1 This paper was originally delivered at the conference of the Northern Universities Philosophical Society at York, in March 1982.

2 Mystiker, Deutsche, Pfeiffer, Franz (ed.), Vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1857, repr. Aalen: Scientia, 1962), 474: ‘tûsent sêlen sitzent in dem himel ûf einer nadelspitze’. I owe this reference to M. O’ C. Walshe's letter to the Editor of The Times, 26 November 1975—part of a correspondence summarized by Howard, Philip in Words Fail Me (London: Corgi Books, 1983), 20-25. Presumably the passage was well known—for instance, the identical imagery is used by Burcher de Voider in a letter to Leibniz of 14 November 1704 (Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried WilhelmLeibniz, Gerhardt, C. I. (ed.), Vol. 2 (Berlin, 1879, repr. Hildesheim: 01ms, 1965), 273: ‘there can beinnumerable little souls on the point of a needle without their generating any space among themselves’ (in acus cuspide innumerabiles posse esse animulas, nullam inter se extensionem facientes).Google Scholar

3 London: Routledge, 1867.

4 Op.cit.,24.

5 The Works of Alexander Pope, Elwin, W. and Courthorpe, W. J. (eds), Vol. 10 (London: Murray, 1886), 313. I have retained the somewhat eccentric punctuation.Google Scholar

6 St Augustine explains the distinction between morning and evening knowledge in De Genesi ad litteram, Book 2, in Patrologia Latina, Migne, J. P. (ed.) (Paris: Gamier, 1844–1904), Vol. 34, and De civitate Dei, XI.7.Google Scholar

7 This is Plato's own term: cf. Phaedo 6IE. I discuss the interpretation of the distinction between Platonism and Neoplatonism in greater detail in my paper ‘Leibniz and Renaissance Neoplatonism’, in Leibniz et la Renaissance, Heinekamp, A. (ed.), (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1983), 125–134.Google Scholar

8 E.g. Phillips, D. Z., Death and Immortality (London: Macmillan, 1970), and Dilman, Ilham, Morality and the Inner Life (London: Macmillan, 1979), Ch. 10.1 am grateful to Roy Holland for drawing my attention to the similarity between Bosanquet's interpretation of Plato and his own.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Essays and Addresses (London: Sonnenschein, 1889), 93–95.Google Scholar

10 The Myths of Plato (London: Macmillan, 1905), 57–58.Google Scholar

11 ‘On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme’, in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association 47 (1973-1974), 5–20.Google Scholar

12 McKie, Robin, ‘Is Anybody Out There?’, The Observer, 30 December 1984, 9.Google Scholar

13 De orationibus, in The Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, Haines, C. R. (ed.), Loeb Classical Library (London: Heinemann, 1919–1920), Vol. 2, 100–108.Google Scholar

14 Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1971, 320. Bennett's concept of‘salvaging’ also seems to cover the historiographical procedure of pretending that an author meant something other than what he said he meant—e.g. op. cit., 313. I discuss this in my paper ‘Leibniz's Rôle as a Type in English-Language Philosophy’, forthcoming in the Proceedings of the 4th International Leibniz Congress, Hanover, November 1983.Google Scholar

15 Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1955.

16 Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edn (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1944), 66.Google Scholar

17 London: Cassell, 1981, 36.

18 E.g. 12th edn, s.d., 31.

19 Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1981, 44.

20 Translated by N. Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1929), 286–287.

21 I am grateful to Roland Hall for reminding me of the relevance of Pope's Essay on Man, Epistle I, vv. 189–206: ‘The bliss of Man (could Price thatblessing find)/Is not to act or think beyond mankind;/No pow'rs of body or of soul to share,/But what his nature and his state can bear./Why has not Man a microscopic eye?/For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly/Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n,/T"inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n?/Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,/To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore?/Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,/Die of a rose in aromatic pain?/If nature thunder'd in his op'ning ears,/And stunn'd him withthe music of the spheres,/How would he wish that Heav'n had left him still/The whisp'ring Zephyr, and the purling rill?/Who finds not Providence all good and wise,/Alike in what it gives, and what denies?’Google Scholar

22 Oeuvres, Adam, & Tannery, (ed.) (Paris: Cerf, 1897–1913), Vol. 3, 213–214.Google Scholar

23 Sanderson, S. (ed.) (Cambridge: Brewer, 1976).Google Scholar In case the reference to angels in seances seems surprising, it should be remembered that in the Judaeo-Christian tradition it is either impossible, or at least a deadly sin, to summon back the spirits of the departed. So, until the declineof dogmatic Christianity during the last century, the spirits contacted by mediums were usually angels, or occasionally good fairies.

24 Briggs, K. M. (ed.) (London: Folklore Society, 1974).Google Scholar

25 The Diary and Correspondence of Dr. Worthington, John, Crossley, J. (ed.), vol. 2, pt. 1 (Manchester: The Chetham Society, 1855), 6–8.Google Scholar

26 Cogitationes privatas, ed. cit., Vol. 10, 218.

27 Opera, Gebhardt, C. (ed.) (Heidelberg: Winter, 1924–1926), Vol. 1, 275.Google Scholar

28 Ep. 54, ed. cit., Vol. 4, 251.

29 Ed. cit. (n. 2), Vol. 6, 539–555.