These extreme measures were not persisted in; but the dispute remained unsettled at the time of the bishop’s death, which occurred at Lodi in Umbria on the 11th of August 1464. In 1459 he had acted as governor of Rome during the absence of his friend Pope Pius II. at the assembly of princes at Milan; and he wrote his Crebratio Alcorani, a treatise against Mahommedanism, in support of the expedition against the Turks proposed at that assembly. Some time before his death he had founded a hospital in his native place for thirty-three poor persons, the number being that of the years of the earthly life of Christ. To this institution he left his valuable library.
Although one of the great leaders in the reform movement of the 15th century, Nicholas of Cusa’s interest for later times lies in his philosophical much more than in his political or ecclesiastical activity. As in religion he is entitled to be called one of the “Reformers before the Reformation,” so in philosophy he was one of those who broke with scholasticism while it was still the orthodox system. In his principal work, De docta ignorantia (1440), supplemented by De conjecturis libri duo published in the same year, he maintains that all human knowledge is mere conjecture, and that man’s wisdom is to recognize his ignorance. From scepticism he escapes by accepting the doctrine of the mystics that God can be apprehended by intuition (intuitio, speculatio), an exalted state of the intellect in which all limitations disappear. God is the absolute maximum and also the absolute minimum, who can be neither greater nor less than He is, and who comprehends all that is or that can be (“deum esse omnia, ut non possit esse aliud quam est”). Cusanus thus laid himself open to the charge of pantheism, which did not fail to be brought against him in his own day. His chief philosophical doctrine was taken up and developed more than a hundred years later by Giordano Bruno, who calls him the divine Cusanus. In mathematical and physical science Cusanus was much in advance of his age. In a tract, Reparatio Calendarii, presented to the council of Basel, he proposed the reform of the calendar after a method resembling that adopted by Gregory. In his De Quadratura Circuli he professed to have solved the problem; and in his Conjectura de novissimis diebus he prophesied that the world would come to an end in 1734. Most noteworthy, however, in this connexion is the fact that he anticipated Copernicus by maintaining the theory of the rotation of the earth.
The works of Cusanus were published in a complete form by Henri Petrie (1 vol. fol., Basel, 1565). See F. A. Scharpff’s Der Kardinal und Bischof Nikolaus von Cusa als Reformator in Kirche, Reich, und Philos. des 15. Jahrhund. (Tübingen, 1871); J. M. Düx, Der deutsche Kard. Nicolaus von Cusa und die Kirche seiner Zeit (Regensburg, 1848); R. Falckenberg, Grundzüge d. Philos. d. Nikolaus Cusanus (Breslau, 1880) and Aufgabe und Wesen d. Erkenntniss bei Nikolaus von Kues (Breslau, 1880); T. Stumpf, Die politischen Ideen des Nikolaus von Cues (Cologne, 1865); M. Glossner, Nikolaus von Cusa und Marius Nizolius als Vorläufer der neueren Philosophie (Münster, 1891); F. Fiorentino, Il Risorgimento filosofico nel quattro cento (Naples, 1885); Axel Herrlin, Studier i Nicolaus af Cues’ Filosofi (Lund, 1892); H. Höffding, Hist. of Mod. Phil. (Eng. trans., 1900), bk. i. chap. x.; F. J. Clemens, Giordano Bruno und Nikolaus Cusanus (Bonn, 1847); R. Zimmermann, Der Card. Nikolaus Cusanus als Vorläufer Leibnitzens (Vienna, 1852); J. Übinger, Philosophie des Nikolaus Cusanus (Würzburg, 1881); art. by R. Schmid in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyk. s.v. “Cusanus”; see also Mysticism.
CUSH, the eldest son of Ham, in the Bible, from whom seems to
have been derived the name of the “Land of Cush,” commonly
rendered “Ethiopia” by the Septuagint and by the Vulgate.
The locality of the land of Cush has long been a much-vexed
question. Bochart maintained that it was exclusively in Arabia;
Schulthess and Gesenius held that it should be sought for nowhere
but in Africa (see Ethiopia). Others again, like Michaelis and
Rosenmüller, have supposed that the name Cush was applied to
tracts of country both in Arabia and in Africa, but the defective
condition of the ancient knowledge of countries and peoples,
as also the probability of early migrations of “Cushite” tribes
(carrying with them their name), will account for the main facts.
The existence of an African Cush cannot reasonably be questioned,
though the term is employed in the Old Testament with some
latitude. The African Cush covers Upper Egypt, and extends
southwards from the first cataract (Syene, Ezek. xxix. 10).
That the term was also applied to parts of Arabia is evident from
Gen. x. 7, where Cush is the “father” of certain tribal and
ethnical designations, all of which point very clearly to Arabia,
with the very doubtful exception of Seba, which Josephus (Ant.
ii. 10. 2) identifies with Meroë.[1] Even in the 5th century A.D.
the Himyarites, in the south of Arabia, were styled by Syrian
writers Cushaeans and Ethiopians. Moreover, the Babylonian
inscriptions mention the Kashshi, an Elamite race, whose name
has been equated with the classical Κοσσαῖοι, Κίσσιοι, and it
has been held that this affords a more appropriate explanation
of Cush (perhaps rather Kash), the ancestor of (the Babylonian)
Nimrod in Gen. x. 8. Although decisive evidence is lacking, it
seems extremely probable that several references to Cush in the
Old Testament cannot refer to Ethiopia, despite the likelihood
that considerable confusion existed in the minds of early writers.
The Cushite invasion in 2 Chron. xiv. (see Asa) is intelligible if
the historical foundation for the story be a raid by Arabians,
but in xvi. 8 the inclusion of Libyans shows that the enemy was
subsequently supposed to be African. In several passages the
interpretation is bound up with that of Mizraim (q.v.), and
depends in general upon the question whether Ethiopia at a
given time enjoyed the prominence given to it.
On Num. xii. I see Jethro; and consult H. Winckler, Keil. u. das alte Test., 3rd ed., p. 144 sq., and Im Kampfe um den alten Orient, ii. pp. 36 seq., and the literature cited under Mizraim. (S. A. C.)
CUSHING, CALEB (1800–1879), American political leader
and lawyer, was born in Salisbury, Massachusetts, on the 17th
of January 1800. He graduated at Harvard in 1817, was tutor
in mathematics there in 1820–1821, was admitted to practice
in the court of common pleas in December 1821, and began the
practice of law in Newburyport, Mass., in 1824. After serving,
as a Democratic-Republican, in the state house of representatives
in 1825, in the state senate in 1826, and in the house again in
1828, he spent two years, from 1829 to 1831, in Europe, again
served in the state house of representatives in 1833 and 1834,
and in the latter year was elected by the Whigs a representative
in Congress. He served in this body from 1835 until 1843, and
here the marked inconsistency which characterized his public
life became manifest; for when John Tyler had become president,
had been “read out” of the Whig party, and had vetoed Whig
measures (including a tariff bill), for which Cushing had voted,
Cushing first defended the vetoes and then voted again for the
bills. In 1843 President Tyler nominated him for secretary of
the treasury, but the senate refused to confirm him for this office.
He was, however, appointed later in the same year commissioner
of the United States to China, holding this position until 1845,
and in 1844 negotiating the first treaty between China and the
United States. In 1847, while again a representative in the
state legislature, he introduced a bill appropriating money for
the equipment of a regiment to serve in the Mexican War;
although the bill was defeated, he raised the necessary funds
privately, and served in Mexico first as colonel and afterwards
as brigadier-general of volunteers. In 1847 and again in 1848
the Democrats nominated him for governor of Massachusetts, but
on each occasion he was defeated at the polls. He was again a
representative in the state legislature in 1851, became an associate
justice of the supreme court of Massachusetts in 1852, and during
the administration (1853–1857) of President Pierce, was attorney-general
of the United States. In 1858, 1859, 1862 and 1863 he
again served in the state house of representatives. In 1860 he
presided over the National Democratic Convention which met
first at Charleston and later at Baltimore, until he joined those
who seceded from the regular convention; he then presided also
over the convention of the seceding delegates, who nominated
John C. Breckinridge for the presidency. During the Civil War,
however, he supported the National Administration. At the
Geneva conference for the settlement of the “Alabama” claims
in 1871–1872 he was one of the counsel for the United States.
