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Alex Taube. Pârdomas par apgaismîbas laikmeta nozîmi postmodernajâ daiïliteratûrâ: Pîtera ..
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and miracles are explained away. The supernatural is rejected. There is no place for
mystery in the mechanistic world vision of the enlightened thinkers of the Royal society
because they view the world as consisting solely of material particles in motion.
The spiritual vacuum is filled by the demonic cults and mystical teachings.
The plague and the fire were for Dyer what the earthquake in Lisbon would be
for the philosophers in 1755. The earthquake in Lisbon dashed the most cherished
hopes of the Enlightenment. It shook the belief of the philosophers in an ordered,
predictable world and in a benign rational God. Voltaire said: “After all, the world
does contain evil” 6 . The rationalistic thinkers say that the devil is dead – they deny
the wickedness and corruption of the world. Dyer rejects the mechanistic scientific
philosophy of the Royal Society because it takes a very narrow view of human nature,
seeing man as a rational being and ignoring man’s irrational impulses and desires.
It views humanity as progressive and believes in man’s perfectibility. Rationalist
philosophers emphasize the orderly and harmonious nature of the world functioning
according to the principles of Newton’s mechanics. Dyer, on the contrary, has a
very gloomy and pessimistic view of human nature and of the world. Having experienced
the plague and the Great Fire of London, he finds it impossible to believe in
the existence of order and harmony in the world or in man’s reasonableness and perfectibility.
He speaks about “the Barbarities of Mankind” and of “the weaknesse and
folly of Humane life” 7 , not of harmony or “Rationall Beauty” 8 . He “saw the true
Face of the Great and Dreadfull God” 9 , and that was the face of Satan, not of the
Christian god of love and compassion. For him human life is full of misery and despair,
of pain and suffering. Human existence is wretched and miserable. He “saw
that the intire World was one vast Bill of Mortality” 10 rather than an orderly and
harmonious universe smoothly operating according to the mathematically expressed
laws of physics. He thinks that “Daemons might walk through the Streets even as Men
(on point of Death, many of them) debauch themselves” 11 . Men are like “the Flies on
this Dunghil Earth” 12 . Dyer deplores the misery, wretchedness and corruption of the
world “in this Rationall and mechanicall Age” 13
Dyer does not believe in the power of the experimental philosophy to be of benefit
to humanity as it ignores the actual state of affairs: “when the Cartesians and the
New Philosophers speak of their Experiments, saying that they are serviceable to the
Quiet and Peace of Man’s life, it is a great Lie: there has been no Quiet and there will
be no Peace. The streets they walk in are ones in which Children die daily or are
hang’d for stealing Sixpence; they wish to lay a solid Groundwork (or so they call it)
for their vast Pile of Experiments, but the Ground is filled with Corses, rotten and
rotting others” 14 . The project of the new philosophers is doomed to failure precisely
because they want to base it upon the imperfect and flawed human nature.
Likewise, Dyer doubts the capacity of reason to penetrate the mystery of human
nature and to uncover all its secrets. He thinks that the glorification and privileging
of reason over intuition, emotion, imagination, spirit and revelation is unjustified.
When Wren and Dyer visit Bedlam, Dyer asks “What little Purpose have we to glory
in our Reason when the Brain may so suddenly be disorder’d?” 15 For Dyer the light
of reason does not illuminate the world, which is full of uncertainties and hazards. It
is the world of shadows rather than light: “This mundus tenebrosus, this shaddowy