samson’s “rousing motions”: what they are, how they work, and why they matter

Samson’s “Rousing Motions”: What They Are,How They Work, and Why They Matter

Richard DuRocher*St. Olaf College

Abstract

Before going to the Temple of Dagon with the Philistian Officer near the climaxof Milton’s Samson Agonistes, Samson tells the uncomprehending Chorus to “Be ofgood courage.” For, he assures them, “I begin to feel / Some rousing motions inme which dispose / To something extraordinary my thoughts” (1381–3). Samson’smotivation for his decision to enter the temple, together with his catastrophic actof pulling down the temple upon the Philistian nobility, and “inevitably” uponhimself, has become the flashpoint of voluminous debate about Samson Agonistes inrecent Milton criticism. This essay aims to contribute to this critical conversationby exploring precisely what Milton and his readers would have understood by the“rousing motions” that Samson reports feeling at this pivotal moment. Seventeenth-century readers would have recognized Samson’s “motions” as the part of theso-called system of “faculty psychology” responsible for the feelings. Beyondscrutinizing Milton’s text, I examine contextual support from ancient and earlymodern sources toward understanding Samson’s “motions” and their workings. Aswell as reviewing the theory of emotions expounded by Aristotle in the Rhetoricand Nicomachean Ethics, I describe the modifications to that theory propounded bythe Protestant reformer Philip Melanchthon, as well as the nuanced approach todealing with affective volatility developed by the Cambridge theologian WilliamFenner. Milton and these Protestant writers share three essential convictions: theylocate the emotions within a comprehensive model of the mental faculties; theyassert the power of the human agent, typically through the will, to control – inMilton’s phrase, “to temper and reduce to just measure” – their potentiallyoverwhelming power; and, most significant of all, they regard the emotions as thespecific point of interaction between God, typically in the form of the Spirit, andthe aspiring spirits of the human being. This last claim in particular addresses aquestion raised by several recent commentators on Samson Agonistes, namely, whetherSamson’s impulse to act comes from himself or from God.

Near the climax of Milton’s Samson Agonistes, Samson agrees to go to theTemple of Dagon with the Philistian Officer. Before leaving, Samson tellsthe uncomprehending Chorus of Danite elders to “Be of good courage.”For, he assures them,“I begin to feel / Some rousing motions in me whichdispose / To something extraordinary my thoughts” (1381–3).1 Samson’smotivation for his catastrophic act of pulling down the temple upon the

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Philistian nobility, and “inevitably” upon himself, has become the flashpointof voluminous debate about Samson Agonistes in recent Milton criticism.2 Atissue is whether, on the one hand, as the traditional reading asserts, Samsonbecomes regenerated through the course of the play and thus enabled tocarry out his prophesied role as God’s champion; or, as the revisionist readinghas it, whether Samson amounts to a false hero, even a terrorist in somecritics’ term, who commits in John Carey’s words a “morally disgusting”act in slaughtering his enemies (333).3 In the most recent commentary onSamson Agonistes of which I am aware, Feisal Mohamed argues that we acceptthe radical view that Milton’s Providential notion of God supports Samson’sdestructive, genocidal violence.

Underlying this debate, then, is a fundamental disagreement over whoSamson is and how he relates to God. Also at issue, I suggest, is a crucialdebate played out in modern courtrooms as well as literary seminars aroundthis question: How does a person’s internal state – a state involving feelingsand motivations as well as mental reasoning – connect with their outwardacts?4 As early as 1959, John Steadman articulated a critical principle sharedby many commentators on Samson Agonistes, that Milton’s distinctiverecasting of the Judges narrative required “orienting the drama aroundSamson’s internal development rather than around a concatenation of externalevents.”5 While following Steadman in looking to Samson’s inward state,many recent critics question Steadman’s accolade of Samson as Milton’s“hero of faith.” Thus Sharon Achinstein recognizes how Milton hassupplemented Aristotelian catharsis by representing “passions well imitated”(her italics) rather than simply presenting an imitation of outward action,and she considers “this supplementation . . . revealing: it signifies Milton’sinterest in the inner life of viewers” (185). In another major essay, StanleyFish warns that Milton’s poem “unsettles rather than reassures us about thekind of redemption available for his hero and ultimately for those who takethat hero as a model for their own reawakening to action” (585). FindingMilton’s depiction of Samson’s climactic act “radically indeterminate,” Fishconcludes, “the only wisdom to be carried away from the play is that thereis no wisdom to be carried away” (586). Mark Kelley and Joseph Wittreich,in introducing their collection of essays on the play, strike a similar note,arguing that not only the essays in Altering Eyes but also an emerging newgeneration of interpretations of Samson Agonistes are characterized byindeterminacy, uncertainty, and ambiguity.

My essay aims to contribute to the critical controversy over SamsonAgonistes in a modest yet fundamental way, by exploring what Milton andhis readers would have understood by the “rousing motions” that Samsonreports feeling at this pivotal moment.6 Such an understanding, I hope toshow in what follows, works in conjunction with how writers contemporarywith Milton imagined both the human psyche and the Holy Spirit. Intheir characteristically syncretic fashion, Milton’s precursors and contem-poraries sought to fuse newer scientific authorities based on observation and

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experimentation with long respected authorities based not on inductionbut on philosophical or spiritual principles deduced from agreed upon truths.With these understandings in place, I return at the end of this essay to somecurrent approaches to Samson, in the hope that these notions may providecommon ground for further controversy and insight for future research.

To begin with, the metaphorical sense in the word “rousing” of “awakeningor rising from sleep” (OED 3) orients us to how Samson’s “motions” workin a couple of ways. First, this image of rising from sleep alerts readers tothe physiological, bodily location of these “rousing motions.” Second, thissame image indicates a movement taking place in Samson from one innerstate to another. A cognate usage of “rousing” by Milton, though in theverbal rather than adjectival form, appears in a famous passage from hispamphlet against press censorship, the Areopagitica: “Methinks I see in mymind a noble and puissant nation rousing [my italics] herself like a strongman after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks” (YP 2:557–8). Both thesimile of the strong man and the hair imagery of this passage create resonancebetween it and Samson Agonistes. Ernest Sirluck, the editor of Areopagiticafor the Yale edition of Milton’s prose, argues that the passage specificallyrefers to “Samson frustrating the first three attempts of Delilah and thePhilistines to subdue him in his sleep ( Judges 16:6–14).” Given this strongallusion in “rousing” of awakening from a dangerous sleep, Samson’sdeclaration of his new emotional awareness at this pivotal moment inMilton’s drama gains in both importance and urgency. As for the “motions”themselves, they are best defined as the plural of OED 9: “an inwardprompting or impulse; an instigation or incitement from within; a desire orinclination (to or towards). Also, a stirring of the soul, an emotion. Obs.”While readers may well wonder precisely what “a stirring of the soul” mightbe, this definition, I hope to show, will prove especially helpful in graspingMilton’s use of the word “motions.”

On the face of it, Milton’s term “motions” would seem to have someoverlap with what we today would call “emotions.” It may surprise readersto hear, however, as Thomas Dixon explains in a recent historical study,that the word “emotions” was a term invented to describe the secularpsychological category for the feelings, and that this term came into use onlyin the nineteenth century (esp. 4–19). As Dixon points out,“emotions” hasno place in the language of either classical thought or early Judeo-Christianpsychology, perhaps because there is no such term in classical Latin or Greek,on the one hand, or in the Bible on the other (39–40). Thus whenpsychologists such as the Scot Alexander Bain and the Englishmen HerbertSpencer and Charles Darwin sought in the nineteenth century for a termto describe the cognition of feelings in physiological causation, they naturallysettled on the fresh and hitherto little used term,“the emotions.”

As opposed to such a secular usage, Milton’s talk of “motions” in thedramatic poem, like those of his contemporaries and of early eighteenth-century writers such as Daniel Defoe and Alexander Pope in describing their


Samson’s “Rousing Motions” . 455

characters’ feelings, invariably sets this experience in a theological context.In settling on the word “motions,” Milton in particular may have recalledAugustine’s phrase motus animae, literally “motions or movements of thesoul,” which Augustine used in a key passage from Book IX of the City ofGod. There Augustine speaks of motus animae as an inclusive term for whatothers treated as the soul’s perturbationes (perturbations or disturbances),affectiones (affects, affections), or passiones.7 Granting that Milton used“motions” with awareness of the term’s theological heritage, he oughtnonetheless to be recognized as attempting to describe his characters’ actualfeelings, rather than some abstract matter of theological speculation. AsMilton’s phrasing in his poem makes clear, Samson “feels” the motionswithin himself (“in me”), and they in turn lead to a reordering of his reasonor intellect: they “dispose / To something extraordinary [his] thoughts.”Within the text of Samson Agonistes, Samson’s verb “dispose” comes to havestrong associations with divine providence, as in the Chorus’s concludingpoem:

All is best, though we oft doubt,What th’ unsearchable dispose [my italics]Of highest wisdom brings about,And ever best found in the close. (1745–8)8

This notion of the motions as real feelings that bear a close relationship withGod’s providence, I suggest, operates consistently throughout the play. ForMilton, human feelings – like so much else – are inseparable from God’sprovidence.

Seventeenth-century readers would have recognized Samson’s “motions”as that part of the so-called system of “faculty psychology” responsible forthe feelings. A popular illustration of this system appears on the title pageof Jean Senault’s book, translated into English by Henry, Earl of Monmouth,and published in 1649 under the title, The Use of Passions (Fig. 1). Elevenfigures representing various passions – among them Desire, Fear, and Joy –appear together on the title page, bound one to another with chains. Allthe chains lead up to, and are held by, a female figure labeled Reason, whosits upon a throne among clouds well above the worldly passions. Thoughher throne indicates her rule over the passions, Reason is not placed higheston the page. That honor belongs to a naked figure labeled Divine Grace,who appears out of the clouds above and behind Reason’s throne. Holdinga royal baton in her right hand, Divine Grace benevolently blesses Reasonand benignly looks down upon the rest of the figures below her. Thus,divine forces are seen as interacting with what modern psychologists wouldconsider secular feelings.

A brief look at Paradise Lost shows that Milton was well aware of thissystem and of the functioning of the affective faculty within it. When Everelates her troubling dream to Adam in Book V, Adam offers a possibleorigin for the dream that adopts the language and the logic of faculty



Fig. 1. Title page of J. F. Senault, The Use Of Passions. Trans. Henry Earle of Monmouth. London,1649. Illustration reprinted with permission of the Beinecke Rare Book Room and Library, YaleUniversity.



psychology. No evil can harbor in Eve, who is “[c]reated pure” (V.100),Adam says:

But know that in the SoulAre many lesser Faculties that serveReason as chief; among these Fancy nextHer office holds; of all external things,Which the five watchful Senses represent,She forms Imaginations,Aery shapes,Which Reason joining or disjoining, framesAll what we affirm or what deny, and callOur knowledge or opinion; then retiresInto her private Cell when Nature rests.Oft in her absence mimic Fancy wakesTo imitate her; but misjoining shapes,Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams,Ill matching words and deeds long past or late. (V.100–13)

In this formulation of faculty psychology, Milton indicates the rule of Reasonover other faculties such as Fancy, which post-Romantic readers recognizeas the Imagination. A third essential faculty is the will, which must approveof what the Fancy presents and Reason explains.As Adam says to Eve:“Evilinto the mind of God or Man / May come and go, so unapprov’d, and leave/ No spot or blame behind” (V.117–19). As Eve’s will did not approve ofthe act of eating the forbidden fruit in this Satanically inspired dream, onecannot say that she has in any way taken action in violation of God’scommand.

Instead of referring to the “emotions,” Milton’s contemporaries used thelanguage of “motions” along with other words for the feelings, principallythe paired terms “affects” and “passions.” In his headnote to Samson Agonistes,Milton twice refers to the passions, explaining that tragedy is

said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear, or terror, to purge themind of those and such like passions, that is to temper and reduce them to justmeasure with a kind of delight, stirr’d up by reading or seeing those passions wellimitated (Hughes 549).

Significantly, this sentence from Milton’s headnote does two things. AsAchinstein notes, it reorients the center of the play’s drama from the imitationof an external action, as Aristotle had it in the Poetics, to the inwardexperience of “reading or seeing those passions well imitated.” In so doing,it simultaneously locates the passions among the faculties of both the audienceand the characters within the dramatic poem. Samson feels the passions; theaudience reads or sees them “well imitated” and thereby finds their ownpassions “temper[ed]” and “reduce[d] to just measure.” In this duplicationof tragic emotions, both protagonist and audience stand to experiencecatharsis.

Since Milton has directed readers of Samson Agonistes to Aristotle, it willcome as no surprise that virtually all of the theories of the emotions



expounded in Milton’s day derive from, elaborate upon, or complicateAristotle’s formative account of the mental faculties. Thus, as well as layingout the basic model presented by Aristotle in the Rhetoric and NicomacheanEthics, I shall briefly describe the modifications to emotional theorypropounded by the Reformed thinker Philip Melanchthon, in his Locicommunes (1521) and Liber de anima recognitus (1552), as well as the nuancedapproach to dealing with affective volatility developed by William Fennerin A Treatise of the Affections (1641). Certainly other texts might be adducedto supplement our sense of early modern understandings of the emotions,most notably works from the Stoic tradition and the moralist discourse builtupon it, best represented in the seventeenth century by writers such asThomas Wright and Thomas Venner.9 The Reformed writers on thepassions, however, make clear and distinct contributions to the Aristotelianmodel, and hence to Milton’s understanding of emotion, that sources fromother traditions do not. As Protestants, Melanchthon and Fenner shareMilton’s theological and philosophical convictions, whereas otherwiseinfluential Catholic writers on the passions such as Wright and Descartesdo not. Fenner, in particular, took his M.A. from Pembroke College,Cambridge, in 1619 (DNB 1:425). His book, A Treatise of the Affections, hasbeen called “possibly the most significant work on the passions that emergedfrom English Puritanism.”10 Whatever differences he may have had withFenner or Melanchthon, Milton shares with these Protestant writers threeessential convictions regarding the passions: first, they locate the emotionswithin a comprehensive model of the mental faculties; second, they assertthe power of the human agent, typically through the will, to control – inMilton’s phrase,“to temper and reduce to just measure” – their potentiallyoverwhelming power; third, and most significant, they regard the emotionsas the specific point of interaction between God, typically in the form ofthe Spirit, and the aspiring spirits of the human being. This last claim inparticular speaks to the recurrent question touched upon by many recentcommentators on Samson Agonistes – and too often answered by mereassertion or assumption – whether Samson’s impulse to act comes fromhimself or from God. If one reads Samson Agonistes within the context ofAristotle, Melanchthon, and Fenner on the passions, one cannot fail toconclude that Samson’s “rousing motions” arise within himself, where theyprovide the point at which the Spirit works to enable him to accomplishhis final act. Readers of Milton may well continue to disagree about thesignificance of what Samson does in the temple, that is, whether it seems toany particular reader a morally justifiable deed. With this Reformed modelof the “motions” in mind, however, there should be little doubt that themeaning or authorial understanding of Samson Agonistes would explain andjustify Samson’s deed in the temple.

Under the basic term πAθη, or feeling, Aristotle discusses in his Rhetorica variety of affectional states, dispositions, and qualities. Fifteen emotionsare named and discussed in Book Two, where they are arranged mostly in



pairs (such as fear and confidence; or pity and resentment) for the persuaderto manipulate. Given the preoccupation of the treatise with persuasion, thetreatment of the emotions themselves does not amount to a complete orsystematic study. In the Nicomachean Ethics, however, Aristotle focuses onthe makeup of the human soul itself, and in that enquiry offers a definitionof the emotions. Aristotle’s brief discussion of the emotions in Book Twoof the Nicomachean Ethics proved to have an enduring legacy. In this section,Aristotle’s primary concern is to define virtue. In so doing, as the psychologistH. M. Gardner points out, Aristotle provides “an inventory of the threesorts of mental facts” (42). Aristotle’s word πAθη, sometimes translated as“passion” or “affect,” is rendered in Rackham’s translation that follows as“emotion”:

A state of the soul is either (1) an emotion, (2) a capacity, or (3) a disposition;virtue therefore must be one of these three things. By the emotions, I meandesire, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, friendship, hatred, longing, jealousy,pity; and generally those states of consciousness which are accompanied bypleasure or pain. (II.v.1–2)

Given this set-up,Aristotle concludes that virtue cannot be an emotion butmust be a disposition. For our purposes, his reasoning is especially valuable.Emotions are not subject to the agent’s choice but on the contrary “move”the agent, thereby making him passive, Aristotle argues. Therefore, anemotion cannot constitute virtue, which for Aristotle must involve choice:

Again, we are not angry or afraid from choice, but the virtues are certain modesof choice, or at all events involve choice. Moreover, we are said to be “moved”by the emotions, whereas in respect of the virtues and vices we are not said tobe ‘moved’ but to be ‘disposed’ in a certain way. (II.v.4)

Can it be merely accidental that Milton’s text, in describing Samson’s feelingsand considered intentions to the Chorus, precisely echoes this Aristoteliandistinction between emotional “movement” and volitional “disposition”?Samson says:

I begin to feelSome rousing motions in me which disposeTo something extraordinary my thoughts. (1381–3)

The likelihood that Milton places Samson’s mental state here in an Aristoteliancontext increases when one recalls that, as Merritt Hughes points out in hisedition, Milton has just referred a few lines earlier (see lines 1368–9) toAristotle’s maxim that “it is only voluntary actions for which praise andblame are given; those that are involuntary are condoned, and sometimeseven pitied” (III.i.1). This maxim from the beginning of Book Three of theEthics epitomizes Aristotle’s discussion of emotion and virtue from theprevious book. In Milton’s text, it is the Chorus who echo Aristotle’s maxim,saying: “Where the heart joins not, outward acts defile not,” to whichSamson, showing his awareness of the proverb, replies, “Where outward



force constrains, the sentence holds” (1368–9). The point of this particularallusion to Aristotle is clear: Samson realizes that if he is constrained by forceto go to the temple, then no moral conclusion can be drawn from hisgoing. Yet he points out to the Danite elders that he is not so constrained:“the Philistian Lords command. / Commands are no constraints. If I obeythem, / I do it freely” (1371–3). Under these conditions, for him to go tothe temple would amount to “displeas[ing] / God for the fear of Man,”Samson infers. Yet his liberating moment comes when he recalls a furtherhermeneutic principle: God is not bound by human laws, and may dispensewith such prohibitions for some higher purpose. On this point, he tells theChorus, “thou needs not doubt” (1379). Samson’s pivotal statement to theChorus that follows involves a similar nexus of emotional constraint andfree action, a momentous balancing act that Milton’s allusion to Aristotlemakes clear. Samson’s emotions do indeed constrain him to a certain degree– his “rousing motions” do lead Samson to act – but rather than completelyconstraining him or reducing him to utter passivity, his feelings actuallyempower him, Samson asserts, as they “dispose” his thoughts to “somethingextraordinary.” By adopting the word “dispose,” Milton has Samson layclaim to Aristotle’s higher state of virtue as a more or less habitual state towhich we are “disposed.”A crucial point for my purposes is this: Aristotelianinfluence does not deny that Samson’s decision arises out of emotion, asMilton’s phrasing makes clear:“I begin to feel / Some rousing motionsin me.” Because virtue is a mean for Aristotle, it occupies a middle statebetween excess and deficiency, and in Aristotle’s discussion of the variousexcesses and deficiencies to which virtue is prone in the remainder of BookTwo, virtue is shown to occupy the middle ground among a variety ofemotional states. For example, the virtuous mean between the emotions offear and confidence,Aristotle observes, is courage (II.vii.2). In brief, Milton’sallusion to Aristotle’s Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics does two things: 1)it grounds Samson’s action in his emotional state; and 2) it regards thatemotional state as the beginning of a different mental state, an intellectuallyconsidered and relatively settled disposition to act upon those feelings. A manwho tells us that he “begin[s] to feel / Some rousing motions . . . whichdispose / To something extraordinary [his] thoughts” (1381–3) is not merelyexperiencing a wave of feelings but intellectually processing and orderinghis consciousness in response to them. Further, he speaks approvingly of hisfeelings, though both their eventual result and the specific means he shalltake to accomplish it remain unknown to him. He is, finally, re-orderinghis own story and its meaning in an attempt to assure others that hisautobiography will yield a positive reading, assuring his countrymen that heintends to do nothing “that may dishonor / Our Law, or stain my vow ofNazarite” (1384–5). Altogether, this is a highly skillful and self-awareconstruction, displaying Samson’s emotional control and intellectualequipoise.11



Although I have been indicating Aristotle’s contributions to Milton’ssense of the emotions in his classical tragedy, this is an apt moment to saythat my critical goal is far from separating out and affirming as preeminentany one of the many strands of influence – among them, the Hellenic, Hebraic,and Christian traditions – contributing to Milton’s great poem. In dealingwith a central figure from the Book of Judges woven into a Greek tragedyby a radical Christian author, such a procedure would be as unprofitableand ill advised as Psyche’s labor. Jeffrey Shoulson expresses this concernwell, and points to a more productive approach, when he writes that “Samsondirectly thematizes the challenge of maintaining a religiously, ethnically, andculturally specific identity in the face of considerable influences and pressures”(243). Shoulson emphasizes certain Hebraic elements that help to constituteSamson’s identity. For example, Samson’s statement to the Danite eldersabout his abiding respect for the Law and for his Nazarite vow indicates thathe is anxious to assert his identity as a faithful Hebrew. Shoulson stresses theRabbinic commentators as his primary guides to Samson’s complex identity.12

While I shall be focusing in the rest of this essay on material contributingto Samson Agonistes primarily from the Protestant, or Reformed tradition,my chief concern in drawing upon these texts describing the emotions is touse them as hermeneutic guides to understanding Milton’s complexinterweaving of various strands into a single poetic text.

In his climatic account of perfect happiness in Book Ten of the NicomacheanEthics, Aristotle reinforces the preeminence of the intellect among the humanfaculties. If one looks closely at this crucial passage, though, one sees thatAristotle, rather than simply affirming the priority of rationality, describesthis ruling faculty in a surprisingly open way, a way that associates it withthe potential of human beings, in moments of our greatest and mostpurposeful activity, to apprehend the divine:

But if happiness consists in activity in accordance with virtue, it is reasonablethat it should be activity in accordance with the highest virtue; and this will bethe virtue of the best part of us. Whether then this be the intellect, or whateverelse it be that is thought to rule and lead us by nature, and to have cognizanceof what is noble and divine, either as being itself also actually divine, or as beingrelatively the divinest part of us, it is the activity of this part of us in accordancewith the virtue proper to it that will constitute perfect happiness; and it has beenstated already that is activity is the activity of contemplation. (X.vi.1–2).

Certainly Milton, who defined the highest end of man as “conformitydivine” (PL XI.606), could assent to this passage. What is less certain,however, both for Aristotle and Milton, is the role that the passions mightplay in achieving contact with the divine. In light of this passage, what extentwould Aristotle – and for that matter Milton – believe the emotionscontribute to or are involved with this ideal human activity? To put it moreneutrally, would Milton maintain that the passions contribute anything tosuch an ideal? Even worse, might they actually work to prevent humanbeings from achieving union with God? Beyond the discussion of virtue’s



status as a mean bordering on various emotions, Aristotle does not pursuesuch questions.

One thinker who does explore how the emotions are involved in humanapprehension of the divine is the sixteenth-century German reformer PhilipMelanchthon. Making a sharp break from the long tradition of Scholasticcommentary on Aristotle, Melanchthon provides a natural philosophy ofthe soul that returns to Aristotle’s text but reinterprets it from a Protestant,specifically a Lutheran perspective. Central to Luther’s radical break withRome, of course, was his radical insistence on the power of faith in a sinner’ssalvation. For Luther, salvation comes by faith through divine grace, ratherthan through either the sinner’s good works or the apostolic hierarchyemphasized by the medieval Church. Luther, it is worth recalling,emphasized the importance of Chapter 11 of Paul’s epistle to the Hebrewsin defining faith and in listing various individuals from the Hebrew scriptureswho exemplify it. Paul numbers Samson among those Old Testament heroesof faith (Heb. 11.32). Beyond naming scripture and conscience as his twoultimate sources for his theology and attacking Roman Catholic resistanceto it, however, Luther in his writings does not clearly and in detail set forthhow the process of justification by faith might take place.13 In his Locicommunes (1521), Melanchthon set out to explain this new doctrine. In sodoing, Melanchthon delivered a groundbreaking doctrine of the emotions’role in human life.

Melanchthon’s innovation was the idea that faith itself is an emotion, oras he put it in his Loci communes, an “affectus cordiae,” or an affection of theheart. His proof is scriptural:“For the Scriptures,” he writes,“call the mostpowerful part of man the ‘heart,’ especially that part in which the affectionsarise” (27). Using the example of Saul, Melanchthon explains that faith inparticular is an affect of the heart:

Outwardly, Saul seems to have been faithful, but the outcome of his life showshis hypocrisy. For he did not believe (from the heart, I mean) that the greatthings he was doing were divinely administered, that they were the gifts andworks of the mercy of God, but he thought they all depended on his own design.I am speaking of an affection of the heart [affectus cordiae]: he neither feared thewrath of God nor trusted in his goodwill.What, therefore, is faith? It is constantlyto assent to every word of God; this cannot take place unless the Spirit of Godrenews and illuminates our hearts. (Loci communes, 90; 92)

Melanchthon does not intend this illumination and renewal of the humanheart by God’s spirit as a mere flourish of rhetoric. In a later treatise, theLiber de anima recognitus (1552), Melanchthon added a physiologicalexplanation to explain how faith as an “affect” or emotion interacts withGod’s salvific mercy. In considering the mechanism for this process,Melanchthon turns in this treatise to the traditional notion of the so-called“animal spirits” that scholastic commentators on Aristotle had seen as thelocus for the emotions. Again the innovator, Melanchthon argues that thesebodily “spirits” provide the point of contact with God’s Spirit. Rene



Descartes, in his 1649 treatise, Les passions des l’âme, or The Passions of theSoul, would offer a greatly refined account of the physiology of the animalspirits; no one has excelled Melanchthon’s rapturous lyricism. In his words:

[The animal spirits in the body] by their light excel the light of the sun and allthe stars; and, what is still more marvelous, in pious men the divine spirit itselfis mixed with these very spirits, and makes them shine more brightly with divinelight, so that their knowledge of God may be clearer, their ascent to Him moreresolute, and their feelings toward him more ardent. Conversely, when devilsoccupy the heart, by their blowing they trouble the spirits in the heart and brain,impede judgement and produce manifest madness, and drive the heart and otherlimbs to the cruelest movements; as when Medea killed her children, or whenJudas killed himself. Let us therefore look to our nature and diligently rule it,and let us pray to the Son of God that He may drive the devils away from usand may pour the divine Spirit into our spirit. (13:88–9)14

Milton likewise relied on the putative “animal spirits” as the seat of theemotions in his physiological account of temptation in Paradise Lost. In BookFour the faithful angels find Satan in the shape of a toad “close at the ear ofEve.” The Miltonic narrator explains that the devil is attempting to “taint/ Th’ animal spirits that from pure blood arise . . . thence raise / At leastdistemper’d, discontented thoughts, / Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinatedesires / Blown up with high conceits ingend’ring pride” (5.804 –9). Bymeans of the animal spirits, Satan attempts to tamper with Eve’s psychologyin order to raise in her feelings of discontent. Thus he hopes to tempt herto disobey – or at least to be open to his later daylight temptation. In thisscene, of course, Eve is asleep, so her rational faculty is suspended. Altogether,this scene from Book Four of Paradise Lost illustrates the negative optionMelanchthon hypothesized by which the animal spirits or the emotions canbecome the vessels for devils to inspire human beings to sin.

The opposite, positive option Melanchthon theorized appears, I suggest,in Samson Agonistes. The workings of Samson’s “rousing motions” exemplifyMelanchthon’s ecstatic description of the way in the divine spirit itself canbe mingled with an individual’s animal spirits, with the threefold result thatthe human being may gain clearer knowledge of God, may more resolutelyascend to God, and may feel more ardent desire for God. If we ask, as someMilton scholars have, whether the “motions” belong to Samson himself orto God, the simple answer is that they arise in Samson. His emotionalmake-up is the locus for his feelings. At the same time, as Melanchthonargues,“in pious men the divine spirit itself is mixed with these very spirits,”and it is through just such a moment of contact with the divine that Samsoncan perform his final act. In the opening proem to Paradise Lost, Milton hadannounced in 1667 an earlier poetic illustration of this possibility thatMelanchthon articulates, one that concerns his personal invocation of theSpirit. There the poet, admitting his blindness and fallen condition, invokesthe Spirit,“that dost prefer / Before all Temples the upright heart and pure”to instruct, illumine, and raise his own spirits for his great work. In both



cases, what matters for Milton is the state of the heart, whether of the poetor the actor.

The contribution of William Fenner’s ideas regarding human emotionsto Samson Agonistes is less direct and localized than that of Melanchthon’saccount of mingling spirits, but I believe Fenner’s work may have beenmore generally formative for Milton’s approach to Samson’s psychology.Fenner’s book, A Treatise of the Affections, or the Soules Pulse, first publishedin London in 1642, takes the form of a series of sermons on Colossians 3.2:“Set your affections on things that are above, and not on things which areon the earth.” Fenner exhaustively, in Puritan fashion, anatomizes thisscriptural verse, thereby enjoining sinners to “set” their “affections” uponspiritual matters, thereby to retain the capacity to control their emotions.For Milton, perhaps the most significant feature of Fenner’s view of theaffects is the positive spin the theologian puts on emotional volatility. Aswe are often too painfully aware, our emotions vary from moment tomoment. Stoic writers lamented this fluctuation, describing it as one of theworst aspects of the emotions, which they defined as “perturbations.” Fenneraccepts, even celebrates this variability. He regards it as the way humanbeings can escape utter despair:

The affections are they, whereby a man is mutable. For though it is a weaknesseto be mutable, yet when a man is evill and wicked, it is a blessed weakness thathe is mutable. (48)

As mentioned, the relevance of Fenner’s view to Samson Agonistes isgeneralized but nonetheless substantial. Samson begins the tragedy in a stateof near despair and self-pity, as he rehearses his failings and laments his failureto live up to his promise. Fenner, too, like a divine physician, notes thatthose sinners who rightly “set their affections” upon God and his ways mayexperience profound distress as they confront the magnitude and effect oftheir sins: “So it was with the godly; they were even overwhelmed inaffections for God with the fear of the Lord, and their hearts turned upsidedown with grief for their sinnes” (49). As a proof text, Fenner offersLamentations 1.20: “Behold, O Lord, for I am in distresse, my bowels aretroubled, my heart is turned within me, for I have grievously rebelled.” Butas in the verse from Colossians, Fenner points out that this verse impliesthat individuals retain the power to re-set their emotions, and thus to turnaway from sin.“When the heart is affected with a thing,” Fenner explains,“it lets in that thing, and it [the heart] suffers a change by that thing”(20). If we substitute for Fenner’s vague and inelegant word “thing”Melanchthon’s idea of the Holy Spirit, the possibility for an individual’sradical transformation based on emotional volatility becomes clear: Whenthe heart is affected by the Spirit, it lets in the Spirit, and the heart will suffera change by the Spirit. In Samson’s case, Fenner’s theory explains how theonce shorn and broken Nazarite can return to spiritual health by “settinghis affections on things that are above,” and thus find his way to see his partin the divine plan. Fenner’s view of the affections accords with Milton’s,© Blackwell Publishing 2006 Literature Compass 3/3 (2006): 453–469, 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2006.00340.x


too, in the awareness that feelings are a valuable, indeed an essential part ofa complete though fallible human being, as well as the part that connectshim with God. To quote Fenner, “it is a blessed weaknesse that he ismutable.”

It is possible, of course, to read Milton’s Samson within other Reformationand seventeenth-century contexts, and thus to arrive at a more relativisticview. Dennis Kezar applies to Milton’s figure the artis moriendi tradition,the notion that everyone, every protagonist, exemplifies the art of dying.Moreover, Kezar invites readers to compare Milton’s skeptical treatment inIkonoklastes of Charles I’s histrionic death with the poet’s representationof Samson’s death.15 Janel Mueller has examined the different waysseventeenth-century conformist and nonconformist writers responded toSamson’s story in the Book of Judges. While conformists tended to viewSamson as a negative example, nonconformists saw his problematic statusas nonetheless applicable to their own spiritual lives.16 Abraham Stoll findsSamson Agonistes in agreement with Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s skepticalDe Veritate (1624), particularly its thoroughgoing rejection of revealedreligion. Accordingly, Stoll argues that Milton constructs a “descending scaleof certainty” out of Samson’s promptings to act: “[w]e go,” in Stoll’s view,“from the untroubled veracity of ‘divine instinct’ (526), to the ambiguityof ‘impulse’ (223), to the apparent unreliability of ‘rousing motions’(1382).” While Stoll is right to point out that, along among Milton’s majorpoems, Samson Agonistes has no supernatural beings, most notably the angelof Judges 13, I do not share Stoll’s conclusion that this brings Milton“surprisingly near” to Cherbury’s admittedly “radical theology” (282). Onthe contrary, Cherbury’s theology anticipates the cultural reading of religionthat develops most fully into “eighteenth-century deism,” even postmodernrelativism, as Stoll admits (283). In Shifting Contexts: Reinterpreting “SamsonAgonistes” (2002), Joseph Wittreich similarly argues against “improving thefit of Samson Agonistes with Christian orthodoxy” (xiii), and calls for ahermeneutics of interrogation. In support,Wittreich quotes Luther’s (amongothers) often conflicting interpretations of the Samson in the Book ofJudges: At one moment Luther celebrates Samson as a hero of faith accordingto Hebrews 13; at another Luther warns that Samson “would be useless anddangerous to imitate” (181–2). One need not conclude, however, as doesWittreich, that these conflicting emphases in Luther’s view of Samson renderthe subject unreadable. On the contrary, the complexity of Milton’s Samson,absorbing and refiguring so many aspects of the biblical figure as well as ofhis later interpreters, would seem to demand an appropriately multi-facetedand flexible criticism.

It is no diminution of Milton’s achievement, nor an attempt to establishcritical orthodoxy, however, to insist that Milton’s text does not recede intoutter ambiguity. My particular claim in this essay is that Milton renderedSamson’s psychology as he himself understood human psychology to be inlight of contemporary theory, and, specifically, that in Milton’s poetic



formulation, Samson’s “rousing motions,” drawing him into contact withthe Holy Spirit, cannot be dismissed as merely “unreliable.” On the contrary,Samson relies on them completely, and readers of the tragedy are bound torely on them, if only as evidence of what Samson feels at that moment inthe play. Thus, for those in the audience, Samson’s “rousing motions” matterdeeply, and indeed without them as signs of Samson’s emotional temperatureand disposition his actions at the Philistian temple would be – as some nowwant to claim they are – at best accidental and at worst indefensible.17

Notes

* Correspondence address: Department of English, St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN 55057, USA1 All quotations from Milton’s poetry are taken from the edition by Hughes (1957). All quotationsfrom Milton’s prose are taken from the Complete Prose Works of John Milton (1953 –82), cited asYP.2 See the lively and useful summary of this scholarly debate compiled by Rudrum (2002).3 Accordingly, Carey reads the poem’s imagery as supporting this ironic reading, e.g.: “Thedestructive and amoral power of the sea which, at the opening of the drama, was specificallyassociated with the Philistines, has now been transferred to Samson. His last bloody act of vengeance,which the surface voice of the drama invites us to applaud, is condemned, at a deeper level, bythe progression of imagery” (338). More recently, beginning with his influential reading inInterpreting “Samson Agonistes” (1986) and continuing in Shifting Contexts: Reinterpreting “SamsonAgonistes” (2002), Joseph Wittreich has been the leading spokesperson for the revisionist argumentthat, rather than a positive Hebrew champion or even a type of Christian savior, Samson representsa negative type – an example not to follow.4 Interest in early modern notions of the passions, and of the human psyche generally, has increasedexponentially in recent years. Readers seeking a sense of the range of work in this area may wishto consult, among others, the following outstanding studies: Ellison (1999), Cockcroft (2003),Paster (2004).5 Among the major studies that build upon Steadman’s focus on the internal Samson are thefollowing: Waddington (1971), Radzinowicz (1978), Rudrum (1999).6 Derek Wood (2001) documents a history of readings of the “rousing motions,” most of whichidentify them with divine direction or favor. His own conclusion, however, is less affirmative: “Imust suggest the truth is that we do not really know the nature of these motions,” p. 131.7 Augustine, Book IX, ch. 4, writes “concerning these motions of the soul” (de his animi motibus).8 William Flesch (1995) relates the word “dispose,” describing God’s agency in ordering eventsin Samson’s life, to the “disposition of the fable” mentioned in Milton’s prefatory epistle.9 For an outstanding recent treatment of these sources, see Schoenfeldt (2004). Schoenfeldtcontinues to develop his wide-ranging treatment of Milton’s representation of the passions, amongother places in his fine unpublished essay presented at IMS-8 in Grenoble, France, in June 2005.For another deeply learned exposition of these sources, see the valuable study by Scodel (2002),which constitutes a kind of bridge between approaches to the Stoic or moralist tradition and myreading of Aristotle.10 Fiering (1981, 159).11 Marshall Grossman (1987) makes a similar argument about the agency of Milton’s characters inshaping their own stories.12 For valuable use of Hebraic tradition in recent criticism of Samson Agonistes, see Rosenblatt(2000), Luxon (2005).13 For Luther’s theology of justification, see especially The Freedom of a Christian (Luther’s Works31:333–77).14 See Walker (1984, 228), Kusukawa (1987, 68).15 Kezar (1999), who shows keen awareness of the regenerationist/skeptical divide in recentcommentary on Samson Agonistes, takes the position that “standing aloof from this dialogue might



be the most responsible option Milton gives us” (322), and he cites in support the role of theMessenger in the play.16 Mueller (2002).17 I am grateful to those who read earlier drafts of this essay and made helpful comments, notablythe members of the Northfield Renaissance Colloquium, and particularly Roy Sellars of theUniversity of Southern Denmark, who discussed the essay with me on several occasions in 2005–06.

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samson’s “rousing motions”: what they are, how they work, and why they matter

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