as stirring a history as any spot in the Presidency. As a small fort built by a Hindu merchant it fell into the hands of the Mahrattas after the capture of Gingi by Sivaji in 1677. From them it was purchased by the English in 1690, the purchase including not only the fort but the adjacent towns and villages “within ye randome shott of a piece of ordnance.” A great gun was fired to different points of the compass and all the country within its range, including the town of Cuddalore, passed into the possession of the English. The villages thus obtained are still spoken of as “cannon ball villages.” From 1725 onwards the fortifications were greatly strengthened. In 1746 Fort St David became the British headquarters for the south of India, and Dupleix’ attack was successfully repulsed. Clive was appointed its governor in 1756; in 1758 the French captured it, but abandoned it two years later to Sir Eyre Coote. In 1782 they again took it and restored it sufficiently to withstand a British attack in 1783. In 1785 it finally passed into British possession.
CUDDAPAH, a town and district of British India, in the
Madras Presidency. The town is 6 m. from the right bank of
the river Pennar, and 161 m. by rail from Madras. Pop. (1901)
16,432. It is now a poor place, but has some trade in cotton and
indigo, and manufactures of cotton cloth. Hills surround it
on three sides, and it has a bad reputation for unhealthiness.
The District of Cuddapah has an area of 8723 sq. m. It is in shape an irregular parallelogram, divided into two nearly equal parts by the range of the Eastern Ghats, which intersects it throughout its entire length. The two tracts thus formed possess totally different features. The first, which constitutes the north, east and south-east of the district, is a low-lying plain; while the other, which comprises the southern and south-western portion, forms a high table-land from 1500 to 2500 ft. above sea-level. The chief river is the Pennar, which enters the district from Bellary on the west, and flows eastwards into Nellore. Though a large and broad river, and in the rains containing a great volume of water, in the hot weather months it dwindles down to an inconsiderable stream. Its principal tributaries are the Kundaur, Saglair, Cheyair, and Papagni rivers. One of the most interesting antiquities in the district is the ancient fort of Gurramkonda. The fort is supposed to have been built by the Golconda sultans; it stands on a hill 500 ft. high, three sides of which consist of almost perpendicular precipices. According to a local legend the name Gurramkonda, meaning “horse hill,” was derived from the fact that a horse was supposed to be guardian of the fort and that the place was impregnable so long as the horse remained there. The story goes that a Mahratta chief at length succeeded in scaling the precipice and in carrying off the horse, and although the thief was captured before reaching the base of the hill, the spell was broken and the fort, when next attacked, fell. The population of the district in 1901 was 1,291,267. The principal crops are millet, rice, other food grains, pulse, oil-seeds, cotton and indigo. The two last are largely exported. There are several steam factories for pressing cotton, and indigo vats. The district is served by lines of the Madras and the South Indian railways.
CUDWORTH, RALPH (1617–1688), English philosopher, was
born at Aller, Somersetshire, the son of Dr Ralph Cudworth
(d. 1624), rector of Aller, formerly fellow of Emmanuel College,
Cambridge. His father died in 1624, and his mother then
married the Rev. Dr Stoughton, who gave the boy a good home
education. Cudworth was sent to his father’s college, was elected
fellow in 1639, and became a successful tutor. In 1642 he
published A Discourse concerning the true Notion of the Lord’s
Supper, and a tract entitled The Union of Christ and the Church.
In 1645 he was appointed master of Clare Hall and the same year
was elected Regius professor of Hebrew. He was now recognized
as a leader among the remarkable group known as the Cambridge Platonists
(q.v.). The whole party were more or less in sympathy
with the Commonwealth, and Cudworth was consulted by John
Thurloe, Cromwell’s secretary of state, in regard to university
and government appointments. His sermons, such as that
preached before the House of Commons, on the 31st of March
1647, advocate principles of religious toleration and charity.
In 1650 he was presented to the college living of North Cadbury,
Somerset. From the diary of his friend John Worthington we
learn that Cudworth was nearly compelled, through poverty,
to leave the university, but in 1654 he was elected master of
Christ’s College, whereupon he married. On the Restoration
he contributed some Hebrew verses to the Academiae Cantabrigiensis
Σῶστρα, a congratulatory volume addressed to the king.
In 1662 he was presented to the rectory of Ashwell, Herts.
In 1665 he almost quarrelled with his fellow-Platonist, Henry
More, because the latter had written an ethical work which
Cudworth feared would interfere with his own long-contemplated
treatise on the same subject. To avoid clashing, More brought
out his book, the Enchiridion ethicum, in Latin; Cudworth’s
never appeared. In 1678 he published The True Intellectual
System of the Universe: the first part, wherein all the reason and
philosophy of atheism is confuted and its impossibility demonstrated
(imprimatur dated 1671). No more was published, perhaps
because of the theological clamour raised against this first part.
Cudworth was installed prebendary of Gloucester in 1678. He
died on the 26th of June 1688, and was buried in the chapel
of Christ’s. His only surviving child, Damaris, a devout and
talented woman, became the second wife of Sir Francis Masham,
and was distinguished as the friend of John Locke. Much of
Cudworth’s work still remains in manuscript; A Treatise
concerning eternal and immutable Morality was published in 1731;
and A Treatise of Freewill, edited by John Allen, in 1838; both
are connected with the design of his magnum opus, the Intellectual
System.
The Intellectual System arose, so its author tells us, out of a discourse refuting “fatal necessity,” or determinism. Enlarging his plan, he proposed to prove three matters: (a) the existence of God; (b) the naturalness of moral distinctions; and (c) the reality of human freedom. These three together make up the intellectual (as opposed to the physical) system of the universe; and they are opposed respectively by three false principles, atheism, religious fatalism which refers all moral distinctions to the will of God, and thirdly the fatalism of the ancient Stoics, who recognized God and yet identified Him with nature. The immense fragment dealing with atheism is all that was published by its author. Cudworth criticizes two main forms of materialistic atheism, the atomic, adopted by Democritus, Epicurus and Hobbes; and the hylozoic, attributed to Strato, which explains everything by the supposition of an inward self-organizing life in matter. Atomic atheism is by far the more important, if only because Hobbes, the great antagonist whom Cudworth always has in view, is supposed to have held it. It arises out of the combination of two principles, neither of which is atheistic taken separately, i.e. atomism and corporealism, or the doctrine that nothing exists but body. The example of Stoicism, as Cudworth points out, shows that corporealism may be theistic. Into the history of atomism Cudworth plunges with vast erudition. It is, in its purely physical application, a theory that he fully accepts; he holds that it was taught by Pythagoras, Empedocles, and in fact, nearly all the ancient philosophers, and was only perverted to atheism by Democritus. It was first invented, he believes, before the Trojan war, by a Sidonian thinker named Moschus or Mochus, who is identical with the Moses of the Old Testament. In dealing with atheism Cudworth’s method is to marshal the atheistic arguments elaborately, so elaborately that Dryden remarked “he has raised such objections against the being of a God and Providence that many think he has not answered them”; then in his last chapter, which by itself is as long as an ordinary treatise, he confutes them with all the reasons that his reading could supply. A subordinate matter in the book that attracted much attention at the time is the conception of the “Plastic Medium,” which is a mere revival of Plato’s “World-Soul,” and is meant to explain the existence and laws of nature without referring all to the direct operation of God. It occasioned a long-drawn controversy between Pierre Bayle and Le Clerc, the former
