He was a
Latitudinarian thinker. It was Glanvill's style to seek out a "middle way" on contemporary philosophical issues. His writings display a variety of beliefs that may appear contradictory. There is discussion of Glanvill's thought and method in
Basil Willey's
Seventeenth Century Background (1934).
Rationality and plain talking He was the author of
The Vanity of Dogmatizing (editions from 1661), which attacked
scholasticism and
religious persecution. It was a plea for
religious toleration, the
scientific method, and
freedom of thought. It also contained a tale that became the material for
Matthew Arnold's Victorian poem
The Scholar Gipsy. Glanvill was at first a
Cartesian, but shifted his ground a little, engaging with
scepticism and proposing a modification in
Scepsis Scientifica (1665), a revision and expansion of
The Vanity of Dogmatizing. It started with an explicit "Address to the Royal Society"; the Society responded by electing him as Fellow. He continued in a role of spokesman for his type of limited sceptical approach, and the Society's production of useful knowledge. As part of his programme, he argued for a plain use of language, undistorted as to definitions and reliance on
metaphor. He also advocated with
Essay Concerning Preaching (1678) simple speech, rather than bluntness, in preaching, as
Robert South did, with hits at
nonconformist sermons; he was quite aware that the term "plain" takes a great deal of unpacking. In
Essays on Several Important Subjects in Philosophy and Religion (1676) he wrote a significant essay
The Agreement of Reason and Religion, aimed at least in part at nonconformism. Reason, in Glanvill's view, was incompatible with being a dissenter. In
Antifanatickal Religion and Free Philosophy, another essay from the volume, he attacked the whole tradition of imaginative illumination in religion, going back to
William Perkins, as founded on the denigration of reason. This essay has the subtitle
Continuation of the New Atlantis, and so connects with
Francis Bacon's utopia. In an
allegory, Glanvill placed the "Young Academicians", standing for the Cambridge Platonists, in the midst of intellectual troubles matching the religious upheavals seen in Britain. They coped by combining modern with ancient thought. Glanvill thought, however, that the world cannot be deduced from reason alone. Even the
supernatural cannot be solved from first principles and must be investigated empirically. As a result, Glanvill attempted to investigate supposed supernatural incidents through interviews and examination of the scene of the events.
The supernatural : from the
frontispiece to Glanvill's
Saducismus Triumphatus He is known also for
Saducismus Triumphatus (1681), an enlargement of his
Blow at Modern Sadducism (1668), which was published after Glanvill's death by Henry More. The work decried scepticism about the existence and supernatural power of
witchcraft and contained a collection of seventeenth-century folklore about witches, including one of the earliest descriptions of a
witch bottle. Joseph made known the existence of witchcraft. It developed as a compendium (with multiple authorship) from
Philosophical Considerations Touching the Being of Witches and Witchcraft (1666), addressed to
Robert Hunt, a
Justice of the Peace active from the 1650s against witches in Somerset (where Glanvill had his living at Frome); the 1668 version
A Blow at Modern Sadducism promoted the view that the judicial procedures such as Hunt's court offered should be taken as adequate tests of evidence, because to argue otherwise was to undermine society at its legal roots. His biographer
Ferris Greenslet attributed Glanvill's interest in the topic to a house party in February 1665 at
Ragley Hall, home of
Lady Anne Conway, where other guests were More,
Francis van Helmont, and
Valentine Greatrakes. In the matter of the
Drummer of Tedworth, a report of
poltergeist-type activity from 1662 to 1663, More and Glanvill had in fact already corresponded about it in 1663.
Saducismus Triumphatus deeply influenced
Cotton Mather's
Wonders of the Invisible World (1693), written to justify the
Salem witch trials in the following year. It was also taken as a target when
Francis Hutchinson set down
An Historical Essay Concerning Witchcraft (1718); both books made much of reports from Sweden, and included by Glanvill as editor, which had experienced a
moral panic about witchcraft after 1668.
Jonathan Israel writes: These and others (
Richard Baxter,
Meric Casaubon,
George Sinclair) believed that the tide of scepticism on witchcraft, setting in strongly by about 1670, could be turned back by research and sifting of the evidence. Like More, Glanvill believed that the existence of spirits was well documented in the Bible, and that the denial of spirits and demons was the first step towards
atheism. Atheism led to rebellion and social chaos and therefore had to be overcome by science and the activities of the learned. Israel cites a letter from More to Glanvill, from 1678 and included in
Saducismus Triumphatus, in which he says that followers of
Thomas Hobbes and
Baruch Spinoza use scepticism about "spirits and angels" to undermine belief in the Scripture mentioning them.
Saducismus Triumphatus was also translated into German in 1701. The German edition was used extensively by Peter Goldschmidt in his similar work
Verworffener Hexen- und Zauberer-Advocat (1705). This work brought the
Saducismus Triumphatus to the attention of
Christian Thomasius, a philosopher, legal professor and sceptic in
Halle. Over the next 21 years, Thomasius published translations of works by English sceptics:
John Webster and
Francis Hutchinson, as well as
John Beaumont's
An Historical, Physiological and Theological Treatise of Spirits, all of which were accompanied by vitriolic prefaces attacking Glanvill, Goldschmidt and their belief in witchcraft.
Atheism, scepticism and Aristotle His views did not prevent Glanvill himself being charged with atheism. This happened after he engaged in a controversy with
Robert Crosse, over the continuing value of the work of
Aristotle, the classical exponent of the middle way. In defending himself and the Royal Society, in
Plus ultra, he attacked current teaching of medicine (physick), and in return was attacked by
Henry Stubbe, in
The Plus Ultra reduced to a Non Plus (1670). His views on Aristotle also led to an attack by
Thomas White, the Catholic priest known as Blacklo. In
A Praefatory Answer to Mr. Henry Stubbe (1671) he defined the "philosophy of the virtuosi" cleanly: the "plain objects of sense" to be respected, as the locus of as much certainty as was available; the "suspension of assent" absent adequate proof; and the claim for the approach as "equally an adversary to scepticism and credulity". To White he denied being a sceptic. A contemporary view is that his approach was a species of
rational fideism. His
Philosophia Pia (1671) was explicitly about the connection between the "experimental philosophy" of the Royal Society and religion. It was a reply to a letter of Meric Casaubon, one of the Society's critics, to
Peter du Moulin. He used it to cast doubt on the roots of
enthusiasm, one of his main targets amongst the nonconformists. It also dealt with criticisms of
Richard Baxter, who was another accusing the Society of an atheist tendency. ==References==