his progress and obscures his reasonings. Yet he does not simply retail their opinions, for their views become mingled with his own; and his apology in the spirit of the times is, that he thought that "the mixture of philology throughout the whole would sweeten and allay the severity of the philosophy." In fact, he writes in the style of the old philosophy; so thoroughly was he imbued with it, that he writes like a Neo-Platonist in disguise. It is not a series of quotations arrayed and commented on, as in Warburton; but the soul is Platonic as well as the dress and ornament. It is not borrowing Plato's clauses, but throwing off thoughts and imagery in Plato's spirit. It is not a few garlands culled from Greek philosophy, and tastefully arranged; the atmosphere is laden with the perfume of living flowers. His fault is, that he sees far too much affinity, between Platonic ideas and revealed truths, though he does not go the length of Theophilus-Gale, his compeer, in tracing all Greek wisdom to Hebrew communication. Had Cudworth been less learned, he would have been reckoned more acute and original. Not so subtle as Hobbes, but vastly more erudite; equal to him in power, but below him in style—he not only demolishes the author of the Leviathan with honest and open assault, but piles up a monument of Greek lumber over his remains. The idealism of Cudworth, though not tenable on many points, was an exalted and noble protest for the dignity of human nature, which the materialism of Hobbes would have debased and fettered, robbing it of all that was ethereal and divine, and making it but a succession of sensational phenomena.
In the course of his illustration of Strato's species of atheism, which gives a kind of animated being to the universe, Cudworth propounds a theory of his own, as to an inherent energy which he calls "a plastic nature—a substance intermediate between matter and spirit"—the instrument by which laws are able to act without the immediate agency of God. But it is a needless and unsatisfactory hypothesis to ascribe causation to a reasonless thing or being, as if there dwelt in nature such a vitality as belongs to a plant. Cudworth regarded nature as something different from God; for omnipotence "would despatch its work in a moment, whereas nature makes errors and bungles when the matter is inept and contumacious;" and divine providence would appear "operose, solicitous, and distractious," did we imagine that everything was done immediately by Divinity himself. But it is a vain speculation truly to insert a power which is not God, but does his work; which is beneath him, and yet is so liable to be identified with him; and which prosecutes certain ends, and yet "cannot act electively nor with discretion."
Cudworth belonged as a divine to the "latitude-men" at Cambridge—a party, as Mackintosh says, "who came forth at the Restoration with a love of liberty imbibed from their Calvinistic masters, as well as from the writings of antiquity, yet tempered by the experience of their own agitated age." Cudworth was no polemic; he placed religion in the emotional, not in the intellectual part of man's nature. Suspicions were entertained of him that he held such views of the trinity as were ascribed to Milton and Clarke.—(Nelson's Life of Bishop Bull, p. 339.) His enemies, the licentious and sceptical admirers and followers of Hobbes, raised many charges against him, accusing him of the very error he had laboured so strenuously to overthrow. He was suspected, as Shaftesbury tells us, "of giving the upper hand to the atheists;" or as Warburton says, "he was held up as being an atheist in his heart, and an Arian in his book." Dryden, in his preface to his translation of the Æneid, insinuates that he has raised "such strong objections against the being of a God, that many think he has not answered them." Such malicious misrepresentation prevented him, according to Warburton, from finishing his great work. The "Intellectual System" was translated into Latin and annotated by Mosheim, 1733, and an edition was published with his notes in English, London, 1845. Dr. Cudworth died at Cambridge, June 26, 1688, and was buried in the chapel of Christ's college. Some of his MSS. are still preserved in the British museum, such as a "Commentary on the Seventy Weeks of Daniel," a "Treatise on the Creation," one on the "Learning of the Hebrews," and another called "An Explanation of the notion of Hobbes concerning God and of the extension of Spirits." It raises a smile to hear no less a man than Henry More saying of the discourse on the "Seventy Weeks," that "it is of as much price and worth in theology, as either the circulation of blood in physic, or the motion of the earth in natural philosophy," while Isaac D'Israeli replies with a sneer, "Judaism still remains." Cudworth's daughter, Damaris, Lady Masham, was the intimate friend of Locke, and cheered the philosopher. Her father's manuscripts were left to her care, and after being for some time mistaken, nay purchased, as those of Locke, and used by Dodds in his Bible, they were, after other mischances, safely lodged in the British museum.—(Life of Birch, prefixed to the edition of his work, 1845.)—J. E.
CUJAS, Jacques, born at Toulouse in 1520; died at Bourges in 1590. His father was a weaver or wool-comber, and the name was originally written Cujaus. Towards the close of his life, the subject of our notice, then known all over Europe by the Latin form of Cujaccius, chose to sign himself De Cujas. He is said to have learned Latin and Greek without the assistance of masters. In the year 1547, Cujas commenced teaching law at Toulouse. The Institutes of Justinian formed his text, and crowds of students—some from distant countries—came to his lectures. For seven years he was thus occupied each year his reputation increased. Till his day Roman law was everywhere taught with reference to the immediate requirements of practice in the courts of law. Alciat and Cujas introduced another mode of teaching, and may be described as the founders of the historic school of law. A professorship of law became vacant at Toulouse. Cujas' claims to the office were absurdly opposed, and at length rejected. He then passed from Toulouse to Cahors—from Cahors to the university of Bourges. Cujas and the professors whom he met at Bourges quarrelled, and he did not remain long there. In August, 1557, he went to Paris, and from it was invited to occupy a professorial chair at Valence. At this period he published his "Notes on the Institutes;" on the Receptæ Sententiæ of Paulus; and on some of the titles in the Digest. In 1558 he married the daughter of a Jew, who practised medicine at Avignon. In 1559 we find him again at Bourges. Margaret de Valois, duchess of Berri, was anxious for. the reputation of the university, and she invited Cujas to occupy the chair of law. She was married to the duc de Savoie, and in 1566 we find Cujas at Turin, conseiller to him. In the following year he returned to France, and was given the superintendence of the university at Valence, with the important privilege of appointing to such professorships as might become vacant. Religious war drove him from Valence. He went to Lyons for refuge, but there found things worse. We afterwards find him at Besançon and Avignon, still teaching, or solicited to teach law. He thought to have settled at Avignon, but the inducements, to that course were altered by the death of his wife, and, he returned to Valence. Among his pupils were De Thou and Joseph Scaliger. In 1573 he was appointed conseiller honoraire du parlement de Grenoble. The religious war had created considerable confusion with respect to property in the south of France, and when something like peace was restored, Cujas was appointed one of the commissaires, to remedy, as far as possible, the mischiefs. In 1584 Gregory XIII. made some fruitless efforts to induce Cujas to settle at Bologna. In 1586 he married Gabrielle Hervé. Cujas refused to support the claims of the cardinal de Bourbon against those of Henri of Navarre to the throne of France. "I cannot," said the old jurist, "consent to falsify the laws of my country." He wished to avoid mingling in the strange distractions of the period in which his lot was cast. Cujas' death took place in 1690. He directed that his funeral should be private. This was impossible, as his pupils determined to bear the body in state. The catalogue of. Cujas' books at the period of his death still exists in the imperial library at Paris. There were among them more than five hundred manuscripts. To transcribe the praises of Cujas from the works of succeeding jurists would be an endless task. D'Aguesseau says that he has written the language of law better, than any modern, and perhaps as well as any of the ancient jurists. Gravina's praise is yet more high, and so in our own day is that of Lerminier.—J. A., D.
CULLEN, William, a distinguished physician, born at Hamilton in Scotland, on the 18th April, 1712. His father was an attorney, and factor to the duke of Hamilton. Dr. Cullen was one of nine children, and gave early indications of unusual intelligence and a retentive memory. He was apprenticed first to a surgeon-apothecary in Glasgow, and in 1729 went to London to obtain further knowledge of his profession, and shortly after was appointed surgeon to a
