Quotations are cited in parentheses by the section (often
a paragraph) in which they appear, using the symbol §, as few readers will have
a copy like my own, a 1912 Everyman reprint. A single section reference may refer to
several quotations, cited after the last.
One online text with numbered sections is available at https://penelope.uchicago.edu/relmed/relmed.html.
Those with a
taste for English prose relish the sonorous rhetoric of Sir Thomas Browne, yet
he has a more modest reputation as a thinker. Indeed, though a physician and something of a
Baconian at times, Browne is fundamentally a poet, marveling equally at himself
and the curious phenomenal world. Yet
to make his Religio Medici a testament of faith, a sensibility drawn to
excavating buried urns and buried thoughts had to accommodate to
orthodoxy. The candid self-reflection
which underlies so much of Browne’s musing yields finally to an assertively
conventional faith, yet Browne’s aesthetics provide a more heart-felt faith: he
marvels at the wonders of creation, in the details of which he spies divine
sparks and creates then lovely structures of prose the beauty of which glows,
just as the beauties of nature do, with a light not quite numinous, but
nonetheless reassuring.
The essay’s very
title, “a physician’s religion,” specifies the dualism. In the book’s opening line Browne observes
that many might assume from his profession that he has no belief at all. (§ 1.1)
To Browne human beings are “amphibious,”
caught “betweene a corporall and spirituall essence, that middle forme that
linkes those two together,” though people are ultimately “the breath and
similitude of God.” (§1.34) Yet Browne
is dissatisfied with simply describing the scientific and the spiritual as
wholly separate realms; he finds in his observations of nature inductive proofs
of conventional religious principles in plenty.
On the other hand, his evaluation of the evidence of his senses that
forms the chief foundation (apart from authority) for his beliefs is highly
subjective, impressionistic even, but for that very reason convincing to him.
Browne does
repeatedly acknowledge that he accepts Christianity as a given, revealed in
scripture and accepted by the believer with a faith all the more admirable for
lacking a rational basis. Thus he
declares his religion “an humble faith” which follows strictly “the great wheel
of the Church,” “not reserving any proper Poles or motion from the Epicycles of
my own brain.” (§1.6) He maintains that
to believe in something “which indeed my reason would perswade me to be false”
is particularly meritorius.” “And this I
think is no vulgar part of faith to believe a thing not only above, but
contrary to reason, and against the arguments of our proper senses.” (§1.10) He argues that “it is an insolent part of
reason to controvert the works of God, or question the justice of his
proceedings; Could humility teach others, as it hath instructed me, to
contemplate the infinite and incomprehensible distance betwixt the Creator and
the creature, or did wee seriously perpend that one Simile of Saint Paul, Shall
the vessell say to the Potter, Why hast thou made me thus?” (§1.52)
Browne may strike
the skeptic as a bit self-interested, in his courtier-like efforts to curry
divine favor. In spite of his
willingness to read heretical and even atheistic books and his temptation “during
the time of his “greener studies” (§1.6) by several quaintly antique heresies,
he assures us that what he calls his “discreet beliefe” (§1.21) was never
shaken “as to encline me to any point of infidelity.” (§1.20) His lengthy defense sounds as like an
attorney pleading a case (as Browne doubtless was, though it may be only with
himself).
“These opinions I never maintained
with pertinacity, or endeavoured to enveagle any mans beliefe unto mine, nor so
much as ever revealed or disputed them with my dearest friends; by which meanes
I neither propagated them in others, nor confirmed them in my selfe, but
suffering them to flame upon their own substance, without addition of new
fuell, they went out insensibly of themselves; therefore these opinions, though
condemned by lawfull Councels, were not Heresies in me, but bare Errors, and
single Lapses of my understanding, without a joynt depravity of my will.” (§1.7)
With such care to remain orthodox, Browne declares himself
confident of his own salvation, though, as “an humble soule,” to avoid
presumption he is careful to add that he dares not take an oath on it. (§1.57)
While claiming to be altogether unafraid of death, he is punctilious
about asserting his bona fides as a pious and simple believer.
Browne insists
that the discoveries of science, far from controverting the claims of religion,
strengthen them. He describes his as a “mysticall
Philosophy, from whence no true Scholler becomes an Atheist, but from the
visible effects of nature, growes up a reall Divine, and beholds not in a
dreame, as Ezekiel, but in an ocular and visible object the types of his
resurrection.” (§1.46) For him as for those reading the book of
nature in the Middle Ages, every natural fact has a symbolic significance. In his view “this visible world is but a
picture of the invisible, wherein as in a pourtract, things are not truely, but
in equivocall shapes; and as they counterfeit some more reall substance in that
invisible fabrick.” He is confident that
“in this masse of nature there is a set of things that carry in their front,
though not in capitall letters, yet in stenography, and short Characters,
something of Divinitie.” (§1.12)
Thus Browne
worships god by studying nature – he is religious because of his medical
knowledge, not in spite of it.
Meditating on the spectacle of natural phenomena, Browne grandly asserts
“Natura nihil agit frustra,” and declares that every circumstance
reveals God’s glory. The evidence of the
human body with which as a physician he was intimately familiar, is compelling
and readily available. He studies “the
Cosmography of my selfe.” To his insatiable
curiosity “there is all Africa, and her prodigies in us.” The miracles of scripture are to him less
wonderful than “that bold and adventurous piece of nature” which is the human
body. All creatures are to him equally
beautiful as all share a divine origin. (§1.15)
In the tightly
wound dialectic of Browne’s thought, religion must rest upon faith rather than
reason, though he would like to think that his own belief is based on
scientific knowledge. Yet the reader notices
a further twist yet. Though built on information
from natural history, Browne’s reverence arises from a mystical response to
those data. His language clearly
indicates the character of his insights. He has a taste, he confesses for “the
mysticall way of Pythagoras, and the secret Magicke of numbers.” He is an adherent, he says, “of the
Philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible. Attracted always to “Ænigmaes, mysteries and
riddles” (§2.6), he is fascinated by “those strange and mysticall
transmigrations that I have observed in Silkewormes” and it is in fact the
extent to which such facts “seeme to puzle reason” that they turn “Philosophy
into Divinity.” (§1.38) There is an
esoteric element: Browne feels he sees “more . . . then the eye of a common
spectator doth discover.” (§1.38)
Not only does
Browne feel that meditation on the creation can vault his consciousness into
sublime regions; he can be similarly inspired by works of art. “I can looke a whole day with delight upon a
handsome picture, though it be but of an Horse.” He finds in human works the
same potential for beauty, signaled by a
“musicke” that arises “where-ever there is a harmony, order or proportion”
reflecting the “musick of the spheares”
whose “well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto
the eare, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of
harmony.” He finds indeed that all music
“even that vulgar and Taverne Musicke, which makes one man merry, another mad,
strikes in mee a deepe fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the
first Composer, strikes in mee a deepe fit of devotion, and a profound
contemplation of the first Composer.” (§2.9)
It is an Hieroglyphicall and
shadowed lesson of the whole world, and Creatures of God, such a melody to the
eare, as the whole world well understood, would afford the understanding. In
briefe, it is a sensible fit of that Harmony, which intellectually sounds in
the eares of God. I will not say with Plato, the Soule is an Harmony, but
harmonicall, and hath its neerest sympathy unto musicke: thus some, whose
temper of body agrees, and humours the constitution of their soules, are borne
Poets, though indeed all are naturally inclined unto Rhythme.” (§2.9)
The intimations of the divine Browne finds in
art are the result of self-reflection; his proof lies in his aesthetic capacity
that suggests a divinely ordered cosmos, the universe as a work of art by
analogy, more than the data of a given poem, picture, or piece of music. “The world that I regard is my selfe, it is
the Microcosme of mine owne frame, that I cast mine eye on; for the other, I
use it but like my Globe, and turne it round sometimes for my recreation.” (§2.12)
. . . that masse of flesh that
circumscribes me, limits not my mind: that surface that tells the heavens it
hath an end, cannot perswade me I have any; I take my circle to be above three
hundred and sixty, though the number of the Arke do measure my body, it
comprehendeth not my minde: whilst I study to finde how I am a Microcosme or
little world, I finde my selfe something more than the great. (§2.12)
His religion of
sensibility, founded on an exhilarated celebration of the creation rather than
doctrinal enthusiasm, makes him exceedingly tolerant and liberal for his
age. He finds Catholic ritual affecting
in spite of doctrinal differences and is willing even to recognize
non-Christian piety (though he retains an uncharacteristically nasty animosity
to Jews). He finds uplift, the reader
recalls, even in “Taverne Musicke.” (On the stoics see § 1.43; on pagan
philosophers in general §1.53, on
acceptance of all Christians §1.54; on Jews §1.25 and §2.4; on general lack of
ethnic prejudice §1.59 and 1.65.)
Given his
spirituality based on aesthetics, it is unsurprising that the good doctor
finishes with a spectacular rhetorical flourish on love. Splitting dualisms with paradox Browne tosses
into the air the question of what is
real and what is “a story out of Pliny, an apparition, or neat delusion.” (§
2.15) He sounds almost as though he is
proposing a koan when he says “a man may bee buried alive, and behold his grave
in his owne issue.” (§2.14) Indeed Browne’s
argument embraces self-contradiction as he proceeds in a dialectical
manner. After saying that religion is a
matter for faith alone, Browne scrambles to assure the reader that his belief
has a rational base as well. He then
suggests that his religion is at base a subjective impression based on a sense
of the beautifully organized cosmos, the aesthetic design of which implies a
creator. Just as he insists that each
human is a microcosm reflecting the whole of the phenomenal world, his own
prose style in this lovely essay reproduces that natural beauty, as for him
humanity’s creativity is a god-like quality. In the end, his protestations of faith seem
almost adventitious. He takes solace, as
do his readers, in a variety of the “argument from desire” best-known from C.
S. Lewis. He reminds me as well of a
twentieth century nonbeliever, Wallace Stevens, who sought with his notion of a
“supreme fiction” to restore a sort of faith without accepting Christian
dogma. Readers unlikely to be swayed by
Browne’s reasoning nonetheless may find his sensibility wholly convincing, and
words can hardly aspire higher than to portray with accuracy a state of
consciousness. This Browne has done with
precision and passion and taste.
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