Henry Sturt

“ 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 is no calamity that natural procrastination, or the clamour caused by his candid treatment of atheism and by certain heretical tendencies detected by orthodox criticism in his view of the Trinity, made Cudworth leave the work unfinished.
A much more favourable judgment must be given upon the short Treatise on eternal and immutable Morality, which deserves to be read by those who are interested in the historical development of British moral philosophy. It is an answer to Hobbes’s famous doctrine that moral distinctions are created by the state, an answer from the standpoint of Platonism. ”

“ 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. ”