The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy.

Anne Conway. The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy. Eds. Allison P. Coudert and Taylor Corse. (History of Philosophy Series.) Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xxxix + 73 pp. n.p. ISBN: 0-521-47335-7.

Anne Conway's intellect developed in the seventeenth-century milieu of Henry More and England's Cambridge Platonists, but she departed radically from those roots. Her Principles is a synthesis of disparate ideas culled from ancient philosophers, neo-Platonist interpretations, Christian traditions, and mystical Hebrew texts. She posited an infinite, essentially spiritual universe, containing only three species: an ubiquitously creative God, whose essential attribute is perfection - and is thus changeless; Christ, who partakes of the divine nature in reduced measure and is thus subject to change but only for the good, and who forms a bridge to the material/spiritual universe, providing the space and time within which it exists; and all created and contingent substances comprised of mind/spirit and matter.

The dominant note in Conway's treatise is change: monads - simple, small and infinite in number - endlessly join and rejoin to form all created substances which possess both mental and physical properties, hence there is no split between mind and matter; thus the universe contains worlds and creatures in times without end which, owing to God's innate goodness, is a limitless well of souls that have continual opportunity to manifest their own (ultimately) positive destinies. Unorthodox in her views, Conway dismissed the Biblical Creation, the Trinity, the supremacy of the human soul, eternal damnation, and the permanence of organized religions.

Editors Coudert and Corse have provided a clear translation and a concise introduction to Conway's treatise, along with their thoughts regarding its importance; therein, however, lies a problem. Conway's vitalist system is touted as a refutation of Descartes's dualistic mechanism, the materialism of Hobbes and Spinoza, and the inspiration for Leibniz's conception of the monad. These are huge claims, but the evidence offered for them is nebulous. Another problem lies in the extent to which the treatise may have been edited. The Principles began as a notebook and was published in Latin in 1690, eleven years after Conway's death. Both Henry More, her lifelong mentor, and Francis Mercury van Helmont, her intellectual companion during the last years of her life, had a hand in the editing, with the major portion falling to van Helmont. In an attempt to forestall criticism, More's preface extolls her virtues, while simultaneously admitting the notebook's lack of philosophical cohesion: "Thou art to understand, that they are only Writings abruptly and scatterdly, I may add also obscurely, written in a Paper Book, with a Black-lead Pen, towards the latter end of her long and tedious Pains, and Sickness; which She never had Opportunity to revise, correct or perfect" (3).

One might assume that More's and van Helmont's devotion to Conway would have caused them to remain as true to her intentions as possible, but one must also be cognizant that in their desire to insure the work's positive reception they might have taken some liberties with it. These are, however, quibbles, and one can be reasonably confident that the thoughts expressed are largely Conway's.

Conway's life was one of unremitting physical and emotional pain; her attempt to come to terms with her suffering is the most uniquely female aspect of her treatise. While not always rigorously philosophical, her treatise is remarkably theological. At heart, her concerns were for endings; she viewed pain and suffering as providing opportunities for transcendence from what was, for her, an earthly vale of tears. Her thought provides a grace note to our understanding of the Renaissance.

WINI WARREN State University of New York, College at Old Westbury