MORE, HENRY. - He was the principal representative of the Cambridge Neoplatonists (who also influenced the poet Crashaw), born at Grantham on 12 Oct. 1614 to Calvinist parents, died at Cambridge on 1 Sept. 1687. He very early repudiated his parents’ faith. He studied at Eton and then at Cambridge, at whose University he taught philosophy and theology.
He sought to reconcile the Neoplatonic currents (Ficino, Plotino, the Theologia Germanica) with the rationalism of Cartesio (who was among his correspondents), arriving at a kind of mystical rationalism with deviations into occultism and theosophy. He was the author of laborious mystical poems and voluminous theological and theosophical works, the most important of which is Divine dialogues (1668). M. translated his own works into Latin in the hope of disseminating them on the Continent. Of his verse, The life of the soul is especially remembered.