Rhetoric and scepticism: Thomas Browne’s Amphibium mind in Religio Medici

ABSTRACTThis article explores Thomas Browne’s figuration of the Amphibium mind in Religio Medici as the hallmark of the seventeenth-century literary mind, oriented toward intellectual flexibility, generosity, and harmony. The article argues that such a mind is the specific product of Browne’s double engagement with rhetoric and scepticism, whose innate kinship has not received much critical attention. Religio Medici includes multiple locations, in which Browne’s diversity-seeking, conciliatory rhetoric is aligned with his sceptical acuity. The rhetoric and scepticism share dissatisfaction with any dogmatic centralisation of ideas and sensitivity to the ambiguity of truth. Their affiliation is often expressed in this book as a dynamic presentation of conflicting perspectives, ideas, and values, subject to a careful deliberation that demands the suspension of judgment and the open-minded acceptance of different opinions. Investigating this rhetoric-scepticism coupling illuminates the process of how his distinctively magnanimous mind germinated and developed into his literary profile.KEYWORDS: BrownescepticismrhetoricepistemologyAmphibiumcreative generalisation AcknowledgmentsI genuinely thank Dr. Kenneth Gross and Dr. Jonathan Baldo of the University of Rochester for their inspiring feedback and sincere commitment to the development of this article.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Pascal, VII. 130.2 All quotations from Religio Medici are from the text printed in Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici and Urne-Buriall. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Ramie Targoff. New York: New York Review Books, 2012. Religio Medici will be hereafter written in this paper as an abbreviation, Religio.3 Digby, 114, 115, criticises Browne’s stylistic extravagance, which, in his opinion, lacks the clarity of thought necessary for a philosopher, reducing Religio to a collection of ‘aequivocall considerations,’ not articulated ‘scientifically and methodically.’ Johnson, xiv, famously states that Browne’s mind consists of ‘self-love’ and ‘an imagination vigorous and fertile,’ despite his distaste for the author’s fragmentary, flamboyant rhetoric. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 176, defines Browne as ‘a quiet and sublime enthusiast’ as well as ‘a fantast, a humourist, a brain with a twist,’ whose mind is ‘egotistic like Montaigne.’ Hazlitt, 333, favourably views the bewildering power of Browne’s prose, characterizing his literary mind with ‘the universality of its nature and the inscrutableness of its origin.’ As a fervent proponent of Browne, Pater, 164, pays attention to the author’s ingenious, sympathetic mind in inquiry as the source of his ‘intellectual powers’ untouched by prejudice, one that ‘tend[s] strongly to agnosticism.’4 Matthiessen, 103.5 De Quincey, 44; also qtd. in Matthiessen, 120.6 Melville, 121.7 Conti, 112.8 Berensmeyer, 116.9 Barbour, 601, 604.10 Many Browne critics have attempted to define the notion of Amphibium either directly or indirectly. Wise, 93, opens a way to understand this notion in relation to Browne’s recreation of ‘a transcendent, unlimited, divine version of himself.’ Muth, 647, views Amphibium as the metaphor of humanity’s ‘possession of bodily and spiritual natures,’ namely, ‘an illustrative microcosm of creation.’ In a similar vein, Dunn, 140-1, regards this notion predominantly as the symbol of microcosm, the mind as ‘the meeting place of all its stages of reality,’ in which he identifies his private self with ‘the whole range of elements and faculties in the universe.’11 Many critics have observed Browne’s appetite for scepticism in his philosophical musings and self-representation/-examination in Religio. Nathanson, 16, points out that Browne’s epistemological investigation aimed at sapientia, spiritual wisdom, knowledge dedicated to eudemonia (human flourishing) and moral improvement, is closely aligned with a kind of sceptical dissatisfaction with the limit of human knowledge—that is, ‘the awareness that human curiosity can never be satisfied nor ever possess certainty.’ Huntley, 91, underlines ‘[t]he tolerance, scepticism, and charitableness’ of Browne’s literary persona that ‘permeates and unifies the work.’ Berensmeyer, 126, equally notes Browne’s sceptical bent in his ‘epistemological observations’ as his tenacious engagement with ‘the uncertainty of knowledge leads the intellectual toward humility, moderation, and scepticism.’ While drawing a stylistic association between Religio and Montaigne’s ‘An Apology for Raymond Sebond,’ Grundy, 529, finds Browne’s ideological kinship with scepticism in its tendency to ‘outline and defend a position based on the ‘doubleness’ of truth in relation to reason and faith.’12 Webber, 3.13 Conti, 133.14 The idea that defines love or charity as an agent of harmony is not unique in Browne’s case. It traces back to the Empedoclean cosmology that attributes the reason for the unity and dispersion of all things—consisting of the so-called classical ‘four elements,’ earth, air, fire, and water—to the alternate operation of love and strife. Love’s universal power of unifying fragmented and opposing elements was introduced to the central thought of the English Renaissance, and this motif was often expressed in a recurring cycle of transformation or transmigration. The specific literary representations of this Empedoclean idea in this period can be found in Edmund Spenser’s ‘The Mutabilitie Cantos’ and John Donne’s Metempsychosis. See, Empedocles, The Fragments of Empedocles. For the circulation of the Empedoclean idea in the English Renaissance, see, Sacvan Bercovitch, 67-80. For a more detailed discussion of Empedoclean Cosmology, see, Solmsen, 109-148.15 The analogical association between the divine and the artistic creation is frequently rehearsed throughout Religio. This connection implies Browne’s familiarity with natural theology or signaturism, one that views nature or the phenomenal world as the metaphor for God’s creation, the observation of which was considered a way to know the underlying message of God’s providential design. This idea originates from the Augustinian doctrine of Imago Dei, the creation of man in God’s image, which became the backbone of Renaissance humanism that views humanity as the microcosm of the universe as well as the direct reflection of God’s creation. The assumption that the world is the metaphorical image of the divine creation was widely adopted by many 16th-century humanists like Raymond Sebond (Theologia naturalis) and Michel de Montaigne (‘Apology for Raymond Sebond’ from The Essays). Another prominent example of Browne’s engagement with natural philosophy or signaturism other than Religio is The Garden of Cyrus, in which the author derives from the complex topology of the artificial garden the immanent patterns of the divine creation. For Browne’s association with natural philosophy or signaturism, see Preston, 263-270. Calloway, 124-158, also offers a broad view of the early modern reception of natural philosophy in the field of literature.16 Aristotle, Poetics, 1461b.17 Lanham, 34.18 Ibid., 18.19 Digby, 87.20 Ross, 1-13.21 Fish, 272.22 Lanham, 9.23 Ibid., 31.24 Warnke, 22.25 Grundy, 530.26 Nathanson, 16.27 Browne’s painstaking pursuit of the final perception is deeply associated with the problem of criterion, the practical difficulty of ascertaining truth. As Michel de Montaigne, 634-5, points out, the radical doubt of the axiomatic foundation for judgment or ‘first principles’ can lead to an ‘infinite confusion of ideas,’ in which one cannot help but perpetually stay in the self-same ground of opinion with no significant advancement: ‘It is really the truest of presuppositions that men […] never agree about anything, not even that the sky is above our heads. Those who doubt everything doubt that too. […] We ought to admit that, no matter what we allow into our understanding, it often includes falsehoods which enter by means of the same tools which have often proved contradictory and misleading.’28 Browne’s awareness of the ‘doubleness’ of truth, or assumption of ‘ignorance’ as an expression of his inability to fully perceive the truth through human reason is lucidly reminiscent of Michel de Montaigne and his sceptical prose. Montaigne, as a matter of fact, is the most important literary persona whose influence should have been extensively discussed in this paper. Yet, for the reason of space, Montaigne does not receive ample critical attention that he deserves here. Despite the lack of studies that connect Browne to Montaigne regarding their sceptical standpoints and stylistic similarities, a few scholars paid attention to their formal and philosophical intersections. Croll, 222, finds a stylistic connection between Browne and Montaigne in their ‘loose style’ as a representation of ‘the more sceptical phases of seventeenth century thought.’ Brevold, 41-2, directly posits Browne as one of Montaigne’s ‘descendants.’ Some scholars, based on their assumption of a close parallel between them, compare Browne’s scepticism to Montaigne’s. See, for example, Huntley, 240, and Leonard Nathanson, 78-80. Both Huntley and Nathanson argue that Browne shows more allegiance to fideism—a scepticism as an apology for the revealed religious truth—than the other whose conception of truth is more inclined to relativism and agnosticism. Grundy, 542, argues that the scepticism of Browne and Montaigne have many things in common; understanding of truth as ‘fragments’ and recognition of the absence of ‘definable order and substance’ in one’s intellectual quest for truth. According to Grundy, however, this does not mean that both Browne and Montaigne completely disregard the notion of a ‘wholeness or coherence.’ They believe that one can approach the realities of truth through the sceptical balancing of opposites that brings about the creation of ‘unity-from-disorder.’29 Hamlin, 245-6, defines this pronounced attentiveness to possibilities as one of the distinguishing characteristics of early modern scepticism. According to Hamlin, early modern scepticism was imbued with ‘protean ability to surface in new forms and guises’ beyond the backboard of the conventional. In this respect, scepticism’s ‘hostility to the unexamined and its openness to the unseen’ ultimately ‘rendered [itself] both fascinating and instrumental to the literary imagination.’ One can easily identify the apparent influence of scepticism in Browne’s fascination with negative reasoning and its elicitation of hidden possibilities for a freer, more copious self-expression.30 Struever, 3.31 Ibid.32 Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, 1355b), 69-70.33 Ibid., 77.34 For more information about the history of Pyrrhonism and its general influence in the 17th-century, please see ‘Michel de Montaigne’ and ‘The Influence of the New Pyrrhonism’ in Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism, 67-88.35 Wiley, 18.36 Williams, 252.37 Atkinson, 39.38 Conti, 118.39 Ibid., 136. For the reason of space, this article could not illuminate in full historical details Browne’s years of endeavour to reaffirm his allegiance to orthodoxy and dissociate himself from heresies through multiple revisions. In this regard, Conti’s study offers an exhaustive account of how Browne used those revisions as a kind of coping mechanism to respond to the rapidly changing religious/political climate during the English Civil War, reinventing his autobiographical persona in a way that smooths out his singularity as a free thinker and his hidden infatuation with heresies. One example of such a revisionary effort is Browne’s addition of section 1.8 in the 1643 version omitted from the earlier two (c. 1636, 1638), in which he discusses the recurring nature of heresies and their fundamental ephemerality, as well as the necessity of relying on ‘an honest reason’ to secure one’s compatibility with orthodoxy. For a comparative study of the different versions of Religio, please see The Complete Works of Sir Thomas Browne: Volume 1: Religio Medici, ed. Reid Barbour and Brooke Conti (Oxford UP, 2023), one that includes all three versions, the earlier MSS and the 1643 published edition.40 Wilding, 113.41 Warnke, 57.42 Hollander, 21-9.43 Webber, 9-11.44 Augustine of Hippo, XI, 215.45 Silver, 80.46 Guibbory, 120.47 Conti, 119.48 Preston, 112.49 Read, 101.50 Atkinson, 38.51 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 378.52 Zimmer, 46-47, portrays Browne’s understanding of God’s creative process in connection to ‘the idea of end-as-beginning.’ According to Zimmer, in Religio, ‘the operation of this plastic principle’ involves ‘the linear activity of the world soul—generation, growth, sense experience, locomotion.’ This progressive principle of divine creation is perpetually continuous and infinitely creative without any prescribed endpoint. She further points out that, despite its dramatic exuberance, its operation is by no means arbitrary and chaotic as it is governed by the mind of God, the supreme rational mind, fundamentally oriented toward harmony and order.53 Shuger, 46, 48, shows Browne tends to understand providence more as ‘a sense of mysterious and meaningful order’ than God’s strict foreordination that stifles human intervention and the operation of individual free will. Her observation reveals Browne’s low-keyed dissatisfaction with rigid determinism, inherent in Calvinistic predestination, and his rejection of ‘the temporal sequencing of the divine decrees on which Reformed theology rest.’ Hence, according to Shuger, Browne implicitly assumes the possibility of human involvement in the working of providence, as if one ‘pray[s] before a game of chance’ with the expectation that the divine order ‘can hear prayers and rearrange a deck of cards accordingly.’:54 Many critics equally observe that Browne’s understanding of order is bound up with the idea of divinity. Despite his fluctuating mind seized by radical doubt and quixotic inquisitiveness, Browne rarely departs from his belief in God’s providential order and recognition of a cosmic design while affirming a transcendental, unifying experience it offers. See, Zimmer, 39; Roston, 74; Post, 79; Dunn, 56-57; Silver, 104; Preston, 265.55 Nietzsche, 12.56 Lambert, 364-379.57 Ibid., 373.Additional informationFundingAll work for this research was completed independently.