Thomas Browne (1) (1605–1682)

Wow. I went into this book not knowing at all what to expect. The musings of a middle ages doctor on the nature of religion is probably not typical of my reading. But it's a book I intend to find a copy of and can see myself reading it again. It's not an easy read, the language is dated, the sentence structure is extremely unfamiliar to the modern reader. It is not a structured philosophy, it's more stream of consciousness, moving from one topic to another based on where the previous thought show more hand ended up, it's not a proof of something, nor a rebuttal, it is simply his thoughts and ideas written down.
He's writing this in the 1630s (date unknown, it was never intended for publication, although he had it published in 1660 after a number of unauthorised and incomplete copies had been published) and he is a creature of his time. In another 100 years we'd be in the middle of the enlightenment and thought would sound far more modern, back another 100 years and you're in the middle ages and another world. He is living on the cusp, when there is so much change in thought about nature, religion, science and the place of mankind, and that is reflected in his writings. As times he sounds entirely from the middle ages:
"Thus it is impossible, by any solid or demonstrative reasons, to persuade a man to believe the conversion of the Needle to the North; though this be positive and true, and easily credible, upon a single experiment unto sense." He doesn't have the knowledge that the earth's core is magnetic and the compass points to the magnetic pole. That was first postulated at the beginning of the century, but he's not convinced, as the proof isn't easy to see. Similarly, he doubts the heliocentric solar system "Some have held that Snow is black, that the earth moves, that the Soul is Air, Fire and Water; but all this is Philosophy:" It's a denying of scientific theory that has behind it a religious sensibility and an apparent contradiction - he's prepared to believe in a God without any proof, but not a scientific theory.
At other times he is startlingly contemporary. Ignoring the language, tell me this isn't a thought from the modern era, "... we vainly accuse the fury of guns, and the new inventions of death:- it is in the power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholden unto every one we meet, he doth not kill us."
This is something entirely outside my usual reading experience, but I'm very glad I read it. This is one man I want to meet, I want to meet the owner of the brain that produced such a wide ranging set of thoughts. At times he is frustrating, at times he is dated, but he is more than that. He is open to ideas, he is open to learning, and he thinks himself unknowing yet pities those who have no learning (the thought behind this sentence could have been written by me: I cannot contemn a man for ignorance, but behold him with as much pity as I do Lazarus.). He wants to explore the world that he believes has been created by God. This is a man from a vastly different time, yet I sense a meeting of minds. show less

First read this assigned to my whole Freshman college class, probably in English. My notes, however, are from years later, reading from my 17C Ph.D., in Browne's Works, ed. Wilkins (1835, rpt. NY: AMS 1968) Vol II.
Dr. Browne writes in his twenties, with an eye for details that makes him a superior physician and writer who lived long enough to be recognized with a knighthood. One detail, the lightning rod used in ancient India. Ctesias, physician to Persian king Artaxerxes, told that in show more India, an iron bar averts lightning. Editor Wilkins says this was believed untrue until the 18C discovery—principally by Ben Franklin (p.234 n4).
Browne says the only indisputable axiom in philosophy (natural phil= “science”), Natura nihil agit frusta. Nature does nothing in vain. For example, Solomon admired ants and spiders, while Browne says “ruder heads stand amazed at..” prodigies, whales and elephants, but “the civility of these little citizens more neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker”(21). We may add the silkworm from section XL, “there is in these works of nature, which seem to puzzle reason, something divine”(58). Perhaps it’s the divine I look for when I see the one mulberry tree at the end of my road, but no silkworms on it.

This entire book hovers between Nature and beyond nature, “between a corporeal and a spiritual essence”(51). But he recognizes the main impulse for rulers to support scholarship and the arts: “It is not mere zeal to learning, or devotion to the muses, that wisest princes patron the arts, and…scholars; but a desire to have their names eternized by the memory of their writings, and a fear of the vengeful pen of succeeding ages”(93). With print replaced by the camera, governors—especially those who do not read like the Trumpster president—have little to fear from future writers.
Browne includes his own sonnet to God, the Sun in month Cancer (starts June 21):
But if thy quickening beams awhile decline,
A chilly frost surprises every member,
And in the midst of June I feel December.”(45)

Skeptical about hell: “I cannot think there were ever any scared into heaven” (75). May I add, Dante makes his Inferno almost inviting, so many neat people in it, and so accessible to everyone, unlike the doctrinal Purgatorio and Paradiso.

Writing at a time of great theater, publishing just as the Puritans shut down the stages, Browne admits “yet can I weep most seriously at play, and receive with a true passion the counterfeit griefs of those known and professed impostures” (96). Numerous accounts recall naive theater-goers attempting to rush onstage to save characters from their fate. My college friend, later a Yale professor, Tom Weiskel noted in his journals on some movie, lusting “like a boy and being moved by the sentimental." Now we are governed by actors, players pretending emotions, especially our president elected in 2016.

Browne reads on Nature and the Divine, but finds them, almost as Thoreau does, within himself. “I could never content my contemplation with those general wonders, the flux and reflux of the sea, the increase of the Nile, the conversion of the needle to the north; and have studied to match and parallel those in the more obvious and neglected pieces of nature, which, without farther travel, I can do in the cosmography of myself. There is all Africa and her prodigies in us.” (21)

When he writes “Not all ‘martyrs’ are as much a one as Socrates”(38), he reminds me of my conclusions from four decades of teaching: Good teachers are fired, great teachers are killed: Socrates, Christ, Giordano Bruno and [fill in the blank]. See my website, habitableworlds.com.
“Men’s works have an age, like themselves; and though they outlive their authors, yet have they a stint and period to their duration.” My first Shakespeare professor and correspondent for forty years, Amherst College Prof. T Baird wrote me, “Professors have a short period of influence, and styles change.” show less

Finished the delightfully archaic and beautiful "Hydriotaphia or Urne Buriall." Now reading "Religio Medici." These essays are not for the general reader, unless that reader is prepared to undertake a Googlefest. Even then they allude heavily to the classics, Scripture, and not a few authors who are today not in vogue. Unfortunately, the notes provided for this edition by Dr. Endicott are not sufficient to slake our thirst for context. Nevertheless, the essays give us the fascinating show more worldview of an intelligent man of the late 17th century — a "doctor of physik" — a rational thinker amid the vulgar mob, who, despite his limited scholarly resources and annoying non-standard English can often be deeply insightful, especially with regard to his Anglican faith and the Counter-Reformation which he was then living through. show less

A beautifully edifying meditation written by a great prose stylist whose life and thought, like his near contemporary Giordino Bruno, embody the transition from the Renaissance to modernity. It is splendid to spend an evening or two with such a sensible and probing mind.