MOREAU, Henry. — He was the principal representative of the Cambridge Neoplatonists (who also influenced the poet Crashaw), born in Grantham on 12 Oct. 1614 to Calvinist parents, died in Cambridge on 1 Sept. 1687. He very early repudiated his parents’ faith. He studied at Eton and then at Cambridge, where he later taught philosophy and theology.
He sought to reconcile Neoplatonic currents (Ficino, Plotinus, the Theologia Germanica) with the rationalism of Descartes (who was among his correspondents), arriving at a kind of mystical rationalism with deviations into occultism and theosophy. He authored laborious mystical poems and voluminous theological and theosophical works, the most notable of which is Divine dialogues (1668). He translated his own works into Latin in the hope of spreading them on the Continent. Among his verses, The life of the soul is especially remembered.