ninterested in such
enthusiasms and found them even repellant--as well as unnecessary--to
his thought. For More the doctrine of infinity was a proper corollary of
Copernican astronomy and neo-Platonism (as well as Cabbalistic
mysticism) and therefore a necessity to his whole elaborate and eclectic
view of the world.

In introducing Cartesian thought into England, More emphasized
particular physical doctrines mainly described in _The Principles of
Philosophy_; he shows little interest in the _Discourse on the Method of
Rightly Conducting the Reason_ (1637), or in the _Meditations_ (1641),
both of which were also available to him when he wrote _Democritus
Platonissans_. In the preface to his poem, he refers to Descartes whom
he seems to have read hopefully: surely "infinitude" is the same as the
Cartesian "indefinite." "_For what is his =mundus indefinite extensus=,
but =extensus infinite=? Else it sounds onely =infinitus quoad nos=, but
=simpliciter finitus=_," for there can be no space "_unstuffd with
Atoms_." More thinks that Descartes seems "to mince it," that difficulty
lies in the interpretation of a word, not in an essential idea. He is
referring to Part II, xxi, of _The Principles_, but he quotes, with
tacit approval, from Part III, i and ii, in the motto to the poem. More
undoubtedly knows the specific discussion of 'infinity' in Part I,
xxvi-xxviii, where he must first have felt uneasy delight on reading
"that it is not needful to enter into disputes regarding the infinite,
but merely to hold all that in which we can find no limits as
indefinite, such as the extension of the world . . . ."[4] More asked
Descartes to clarify his language in their correspondence of 1648-49,
the last year of Descartes' life.

_Democritus Platonissans_ is More's earliest statement about absolute
space and time; by introducing these themes into English philosophy, he
contributed significantly to the intellectual history of the seventeenth
century. Newton, indeed, was able to make use of More's forging efforts;
but of relative time or space and their measurement, which so much
concerned Newton, More had little to say. He was preoccupied with the
development of a theory which would show that immaterial substance, with
space and time as attributes, is as real and as absolute as the
Cartesian geometrical and spatial account of matter which he felt was
true but much in need of amplification.

In his first letter to Descartes, of 11 Dec