TIONALISTS, IV., § 1.
CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS: The name usually given to a succession of distinguished English divines and philosophers of the seventeenth century, also known to their contemporaries as "Latitude Men," from the breadth and comprehensiveness of
Cambridge Flatonists Cameron
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
their teaching. The most important of them were Benjamin Whichcote, John Smith, Ralph Cudworth, and Henry More. Other members of the school were Simon Patrick. Nathanael Culverwel, John Worthington, George Rust, and Edward Fowler; while Joseph Glanvill and John Norris, though Oxford men, were so intimately associated with it as to be sometimes included. Starting with many of the same thoughts as their immediate predecessors in the development of liberal or rational thought, Hales and Chillingworth, they aimed less than these at ecclesiastical comprehension; their purpose was to find a higher organon of Christian thought, and to vindicate the essential principles of Christianity against both dogmatic excesses within the Church and philosophical extravagances without it. Unlike the former, too, they all came from the Puritan side; with the exception of More, their leaders were members of the famous Puritan college of Emmanuel, and thus closely bound together into a definite group or school. The main source of their inspiration was the study of the Platonic philosophy, not only in Plato himself but in his Alexandrian and modern disciples. This Platonic revival was important as evoking the only force adequate to meet the development of naturalism in a direction which threatened the distinctive principles of religion. But if Platonism was the positive determinant factor in the movement, the negative influence which formed the school was opposition to the destructive reasoning of Hobbes, whose materialistic tendency they met not only, like Clarendon and others, by polemical criticism, but by a well-ordered scheme of thought, whose principles had been already worked into unison with Christian philosophy. Of their permanent achievements, not the least important was their inculcation of the doctrine of toleration, at that time so novel and unpopular. They solved the religious problem, not by giving it up, but by pushing it to its legitimate conclusion and drawing the essential distinction between dogma and religion, which is one of their chief contributions to modern thought. Against the materialism of their time, they labored to prove that religion was a transcendent reality, a substantive power binding the soul to God and revealing God to the soul. Their writings are frequently obscure and involved, and they show a lack of critical and historical judgment in their confusion of Platonism and Neoplatonism, in their speculative fancifulness, and in their misappreciation of evidence. But their services to their age can scarcely be overrated. The exponents and advocates of a comprehensive Church, the purifiers of the popular theology, they were at the same time the great champions of the reality of religion at a time when the excesses of its partizans were driving so many of their contemporaries into unbelief. See the separate articles on the various men named above.
Bibliography: The best account is by J. Tulloch, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England, vol. ii., Edinburgh, 1872. The early prospectus was a pamphlet by S. P (Simon Patrick?), Brief Account of the New Sect of the New Latitude M en, London, 1602. Consult further: E. Fowler, Practices of Certain Divines Abu-
sively Called Latitudinarians, ib. 1671; G Dyer, History of the University . of Cambridge, ii. 91-101, ib. 1814; W E. H. Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe,
2 vols., ib. 1875 (an ill-balanced estimate); F. Greenslet, Joseph Glanvill, New York, 1900; E. T. Campagnac, The Cainhridae Flatonists; beiny Selections from Whichcote, •Smith, and Culverwel, Oxford, 1901.
CAMEL: The most valuable possession of the nomads of the desert.
The Syrian and Egyptian camel is the singlehumped, lank, and long-legged Camelus dromedarius. Its foremost utility is that of common carrier ("ship of the mainland" was its poetical designation even prior to Islam). Great bodily strength and endurance fit it for this service. Its very voracity is content with the meanest fodder of the driest pasture grasses, half-dried acacia twigs, dry straw, and the like; and it can toil days at a time upon an exceedingly small stint of forage. At such times the fatty hump, which when in good condition weighs as much as thirty pounds, almost entirely disappears. It is no less easily satisfied in the article of water. In spring it feeds on freshly dewed grasses, and can dispense with watering several weeks running. In the dry season it can hold out three or four days without water; and then, when it reaches a watering-place, it swallows the water in enormous quantities. Its broad, fleshy, cushioned foot prevents it from sinking deeply into the desert sand.
The carrier camel bears ordinarily from two to three hundredweight; still more on occasion (cf. II Kings viii. 9). Its gait at a walk is about two and one-half miles an hour, and it maintains this pace right along with alacrity and freshness for twelve or fourteen hours and even longer. The riding camel differs from the foregoing, just as a noble race-horse from the heavy draft-horse. It can cover as much as ninety miles a day, and this for several days together. The camel saddle is a trough-shaped wooden seat fastened over the hump with a tight gearing both front and back. This is covered with a cushion. The rider sits as on a side-saddle. For women and children palanquins are likewise in use, with seats and curtains (Gen. xxiv. 61, xxxi. 17). The camel ministers to the Bedouins' every-day needs. The rather thick and fatty camel's milk is their beverage; and their horses often drink it. The flesh of the camel, except that of the hump, which is esteemed a peculiar delicacy, is said to be hard and tough; but still it is a feast for the Bedouin to kill one of the herd and eat meat. They also occasionally bleed the camel a little in times of scarceness. The Israelites accounted camel's flesh unclean. The Bedouins' coarse cloaks are woven of camel's hair (Matt. iii. 4), and also their thick tent-rugs. The hide is worked into sandals, thongs, water-skins, and the like. The dung is dried and then serves for fuel.
The camel naturally is less important in agricultural Palestine. Yet even here it has its usefulness as beast of burden; and when heavy loads and great distances are in question, horses and mules are not to be compared with it. In the Old Testament the breeding of camels on a large scale is found under the patriarchs (Gen. xii. 16, xxiv. 10, xxx. A'.i) and David (I Chron. xxvii. 3:)). But