there are such things as
_Incorporeal Beings_ or _Spirits_, yet do very peremptorily contend,
that they are _no where_ in the whole World [;] . . . because they so
boldly affirm that a Spirit is _Nullibi_, that is to say, _no where_,"
they deserve to be called _Nullibists_.[5] In contrast to these false
teachers, More describes absolute space by listing twenty epithets which
can be applied either to God or to pure extension, such as "Unum,
Simplex, Immobile . . . Incomprehensible "[6] There is, however,
a great difficulty here; for while Space and Spirit are eternal and
uncreated, they yet contain material substance which has been created by
God. If the material world possesses infinite extension, as More
generally believes, that would preclude any need of its having a
creator. In order to avoid this dilemma, which _Democritus Platonissans_
ignores, More must at last separate matter and space, seeing the latter
as an attribute of God through which He is able to contain a finite
world limited in space as well as in time. In writing that "this
infinite space because of its infinity is distinct from matter,"[7] More
reveals the direction of his conclusion; the dichotomy it embodies is
Cartesianism in reverse.

While More always labored to describe the ineffable, his earliest work,
the poetry, may have succeeded in this wish most of all. Although he
felt that his poetry was aiming toward truths which his "_later and
better concocted Prose_"[8] reached, the effort cost him the
suggestiveness of figurative speech. In urging himself on toward an ever
more consistent statement of belief, he lost much of his beginning
exuberance (best expressed in the brief "Philosopher's Devotion") and
the joy of intellectual discovery. In the search "_to find out Words
which will prove faithful witnesses of the peculiarities of my
Thoughts_," he staggers under the unsupportable burden of too many
words. In trying so desperately to clarify his thought, he rejected
poetic discourse as "slight"; only a language free of metaphor and
symbol could, he supposed, lead toward correctness. Indeed, More soon
renounced poetry; he apparently wrote no more after collecting it in
_Philosophical Poems_ (1647), when he gave up poetry for "more seeming
Substantial performances in solid _Prose_."[9] "Cupids Conflict," which
is "annexed" to _Democritus Platonissans_, is an interesting revelation
of the failure of poetry, as More felt it: he justifies his "r