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NORRIS, JOHN (1657-1711)

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Originally appearing in Volume V19, Page 757 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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NORRIS, See also:JOHN (1657-1711) , See also:English philosopher and divine, was See also:born at Collingbourne-See also:Kingston in See also:Wiltshire. He was educated at See also:Winchester and See also:Exeter See also:College, See also:Oxford, being subsequently elected to a fellowship at All Souls'. His first See also:original See also:work was An See also:Idea of Happiness (1683), in which, with See also:Plato, he places the highest happiness or fruition of the soul in the contemplative love of See also:God. See also:Malebranche's Recherche de la verite, which had appeared in 1674, made a strong impression upon him. Malebranche, he says, " is indeed the See also:great Galileo of the intellectual See also:world." He had also studied the See also:works of See also:Descartes himself, and most of what had been written for and against See also:Cartesianism. Of English thinkers, More and See also:Cudworth, the so-called See also:Cambridge Platonists, had influenced him most; and in 1685 his study of their works led to a See also:correspondence with the former, published after his See also:death by Norris as an appendix to his Platonically conceived See also:essay on The Theory and Regulation of Love (1688). He also corresponded with Mrs See also:Astell (q.v.) and See also:Lady See also:Masham, the friend of See also:Locke, to whom he addressed his Reflections upon the Conduct of Human See also:Life (1689). Some See also:time before this Norris had taken orders, and in 1689 he was presented to the living of See also:Newton St Loe, in See also:Somersetshire. In 1690 he published a See also:volume of Discourses upon the Beatitudes, followed by three more volumes of See also:Practical Discourses between 1690 and 1698. The See also:year 1690 is memorable as the year of the publication of Locke's Essay, and the See also:book came into Norris's hands just as his volume of Discourses was passing through the See also:press. He at once appreciated its importance, but its whole See also:temper was See also:alien from the modes of thought in which he had been reared, and its See also:main conclusions moved him to keen dissent. He hastened to " See also:review " it in an appendix to his sermons.

These Cursory Reflections constitute Norris the first critic of the Essay; and they anticipate some of the arguments that have since been persistently urged against Locke from the transcendental See also:

side. Though holding to the " See also:grey-headed, See also:venerable See also:doctrine " of innate ideas as little as Locke himself, Norris finds the See also:criticism in the first book of the Essay entirely inconclusive, and points out its inconsistency with Locke's own doctrine of evident or intuitively perceived truths. He also suggests the possibility of subconscious ideation, on which See also:Leibnitz laid so much stress in the same connexion. He next complains that Locke neglects to tell us " what See also:kind of things these ideas are which are let in at the See also:gate of the senses." In other words, while giving a metaphorical See also:account of how we come by our ideas, Locke leaves unconsidered the intellectual nature of the ideas or of thought in itself. Unless we come to some conclusion on this point, Norris argues, we have little See also:chance of being right in our theory of how ideas " come to be See also:united to our mind." He also saw the weakness of Locke's doctrine of nominal essences, showing how it ignores the relation of the human mind to See also:objective truth, and instancing mathematical figures as a See also:case " where the nominal essence and the real essence are all one." The last twenty years of Norris's life were spent at Bemerton, near See also:Salisbury, the former See also:home of See also:George See also:Herbert, to the living of which he had been transferred in 169r. In 1691–1692 he was engaged in controversy with his old enemies the " Separatists," and with the See also:Quakers, his Malebranchian theory of the divine See also:illumination having been confounded by some with the Quaker doctrine of the See also:light within. In 1697 he wrote An Account of See also:Reason and Faith, one of the best of the many answers to See also:Toland's See also:Christianity not Mysterious. Norris adopts the distinction between things contrary to reason and things above reason, and maintains that the human mind is not the measure of truth. Reason, according to him, is nothing but the exact measure of truth, that is to say, divine reason, which differs from human reason only in degree, not in nature. In 1701 appeared the first volume of the systematic philosophical work by which he is remembered, An Essay towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intelligible World. The first volume treats the intelligible world absolutely; the second, which appeared in 1704, considers it in relation to human understanding. It is a See also:complete ex-position of the See also:system of Malebranche, in which Norris refutes the assertions of Locke and the sensualists.

In 1708 Norris wrote A Philosophical Discourse concerning the Natural See also:

Immortality of the Soul, defending that doctrine against the assaults of See also:Dodwell. After this he wrote little. He died at Bemerton, and a See also:monument was erected to his memory in the See also:parish See also:church, with an inscription in which he is spoken of as one who " bene latuit." Norris was neither an original thinker nor a See also:master of See also:style. His See also:philosophy is hardly more than an English version of Malebranche, enriched by wide See also:reading of " Platonic thinkers of every See also:age and See also:country. His style is too scholastic and self-involved. His Theory of the Intelligible World is an See also:attempt to explain the objective nature of truth, which he blamed Locke for leaving out of regard. By theintelligible world Norris understands the system of ideas eternally existent in the mind of God, according to which the material creation was formed. This ideal system he identifies with the See also:Logos—the second See also:person of the Trinity, the light that lighteth every See also:man that cometh into the world. For it is these ideas and their relations that are alone the See also:object-See also:matter of See also:science; whenever we know, it is because they are See also:present to our mind. Material things are wholly dark to us, except so far as the fact of their existence is revealed in sensation. The matter which we say that we know is the idea of matter, and belongs, like other ideas, to the intelligible world. When stripped of its semi-mythical See also:form of statement, Norris's emphatic assertion of the ideal nature of thought and its complete distinction from sense as such may be seen to contain an important truth.

As the See also:

disciple and correspondent of More, he is, in a sense, the See also:heir of the Cambridge Platonists, while, as the first critic of Locke's Essay, he may be said to open the protest of the church against the implicit tendencies of that work. He occupies a See also:place, therefore, in the See also:succession of churchly and mystical thinkers of whom See also:Coleridge is the last eminent example. See See also:Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (ed. See also:Bliss), iv.; Biographia Britannica; See also:Leslie See also:Stephen in See also:Dictionary of See also:National See also:Biography; J. See also:Tulloch, Rational See also:Theology and See also:Christian Philosophy in See also:England in the 17th See also:Century (1874), who calls Norris " as striking and significant a figure in the See also:history of English philosophy " as another idealist, See also:Berkeley.

End of Article: NORRIS, JOHN (1657-1711)

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