maintaining, the latter denying, that the Plastic Medium is really favourable to atheism.
No modern reader can endure to toil through the Intellectual System; its only interest is the light it throws upon the state of religious thought after the Restoration, when, as Birch puts it, “irreligion began to lift up its head.” It is immensely diffuse and pretentious, loaded with digressions, its argument buried under masses of fantastic, uncritical learning, the work of a vigorous but quite unoriginal mind. As Bolingbroke said, Cudworth “read too much to think enough, and admired too much to think freely.” It is no calamity that natural procrastination, or the clamour caused by his candid treatment of atheism and by certain heretical tendencies detected by orthodox criticism in his view of the Trinity, made Cudworth leave the work unfinished.
A much more favourable judgment must be given upon the short Treatise on eternal and immutable Morality, which deserves to be read by those who are interested in the historical development of British moral philosophy. It is an answer to Hobbes’s famous doctrine that moral distinctions are created by the state, an answer from the standpoint of Platonism. Just as knowledge contains a permanent intelligible element over and above the flux of sense-impressions, so there exist eternal and immutable ideas of morality. Cudworth’s ideas, like Plato’s, have “a constant and never-failing entity of their own,” such as we see in geometrical figures; but, unlike Plato’s, they exist in the mind of God, whence they are communicated to finite understandings. Hence “it is evident that wisdom, knowledge and understanding are eternal and self-subsistent things, superior to matter and all sensible beings, and independent upon them”; and so also are moral good and evil. At this point Cudworth stops; he does not attempt to give any list of Moral Ideas. It is, indeed, the cardinal weakness of this form of intuitionism that no satisfactory list can be given and that no moral principles have the “constant and never-failing entity,” or the definiteness, of the concepts of geometry. Henry More, in his Enchiridion ethicum, attempts to enumerate the “noemata moralia”; but, so far from being self-evident, most of his moral axioms are open to serious controversy.
The Intellectual System was translated into Latin by J. L. Mosheim and furnished with notes and dissertations which were translated into English in J. Harrison’s edition (1845). Our chief biographical authority is T. Birch’s “Account,” which appears in editions of the Works. There is a good chapter on Cudworth in J. Tulloch’s Rational Theology, vol. ii. Consult also P. Janet’s Essai sur le médiateur plastique (1860), W. R. Scott’s Introduction to Cudworth’s “Treatise,” and J. Martineau’s Types of Ethical Theory, vol. ii. (H. St.)
CUENCA, a city and the capital of the province of Azuay,
Ecuador, about 190 m. S. of Quito and 70 m. S.E. of Guayaquil.
Pop. (1908 estimate) 30,000 (largely Indians), including the
suburb of Ejido. Cuenca stands at the northern end of a broad
valley, or basin, of the Andes, lying between the transverse
ridges of Azuay and Loja, and is about 8640 ft. above sea-level.
Near by is the hill of Tarqui which the French astronomers chose
for their meridian in 1742. Communication with the coast is
difficult. Cuenca is the third most important city of Ecuador,
being the seat of a bishopric, and having a college, a university
faculty, a cathedral, and several churches, and a considerable
industrial and commercial development. It manufactures
sugar, woollen goods and pottery, and exports Peruvian bark
(cinchona), hats, cereals, cheese, hides, &c. It was founded in
1557 on the site of a native town called Tumibamba, and was
made an episcopal see in 1786.
CUENCA, a province of central Spain bounded on the N. by
Guadalajara, N.E. by Teruel, E. by Valencia, S. by Albacete,
S.W. by Ciudad Real, W. by Toledo and N.W. by Madrid.
Pop. (1900) 249,696; area, 6636 sq. m. Cuenca occupies the
eastern part of the ancient kingdom of New Castile, and slopes
from the Serrania de Cuenca (highest point the Cerro de San
Felipe, on the north-eastern border of the province, 5905 ft.),
down into the great southern Castilian plain watered by the upper
streams of the Guadiana. The lowlands bordering on Ciudad
Real belong to the wide plain of La Mancha (q.v.). The rocky
and bare highland of Cuenca on the north and east includes the
upper valley of the Jucar and its tributary streams, but in the
north-west the province is watered by tributaries of the Tagus.
The forests are proverbial for their pine timber, and rival those
of Soria; considerable quantities of timber are floated down the
Tagus to Aranjuez and thence taken to Madrid for building
purposes. Excessive droughts prevail; the climate of the hills
and of the high plateaus is harsh and cold, but the valleys are
excessively hot in summer. The soil, where well watered, is
fertile, but little attention is paid to agriculture, and three-fourths
of the area is left under pasture. The rearing of cattle,
asses, mules and sheep is the principal employment of the people;
olive oil, nuts, wine, wheat, silk, wax and honey are the chief
products. Iron, copper, alum, saltpetre, jasper and agates are
found, but in 1903 all the workings had been abandoned except
three salt mines; and there are few manufactures except the
weaving of coarse cloth. The roads are in such a backward
condition that they cripple not only the mining interests but also
the exports of timber, and at the beginning of the 20th century
there was no railway except a branch line which passed westwards
from Aranjuez through Tarancon to Cuenca, the capital (pop.
1900, 10,756). No other town has as many as 6000 inhabitants,
and no other Spanish province is so thinly populated as Cuenca.
In 1900 there were only 37.6 inhabitants per sq. m. Education
is backward, and extreme poverty almost universal among the
peasantry. See also Castile.
CUENCA, the capital of the Spanish province of Cuenca;
125 m. by rail E. by S. of Madrid. Pop. (1900) 10,756. Cuenca
occupies a height of the well-wooded Serrania de Cuenca, at an
elevation of 2960 ft., overlooking the confluence of the rivers
Jucar and Huecar. A fine bridge, built in 1523, crosses the
Jucar to the convent of San Pablo. Among several interesting
churches in the city, the most noteworthy is the 13th-century
Gothic cathedral, celebrated for the beautiful carved woodwork
of its 16th-century doorway, and containing some admirable
examples of Spanish sculpture. The city has a considerable
trade in timber, and was long the headquarters of the provincial
wool industry; the loss of which, in modern times, has partly
been compensated by the development of soap, paper, chocolate,
match and leather manufactures. Cuenca was captured from
the Moors by Alphonso VIII. of Castile in 1177, and shortly
afterwards became an episcopal see. In 1874 it offered a prolonged
and gallant resistance to the Carlist rebels.
CUESTA, a name of Spanish origin used in New Mexico for
low ridges of steep descent on one side and gentle slope on the
other. It has been proposed as a term for the land form which
consists of the two elements of a steep scarp or “strike” face,
and an inclined plain or gentle “dip” slope.
CUEVAS DE VERA, a town of south-eastern Spain, in the province
of Almería; on the right bank of the river Almanzora, 8 m. W. of the Mediterranean Sea. Pop. (1900) 20,562. Cuevas de Vera is built at the eastern extremity of the Sierra de los Filabres (6823 ft.), which isolate it from the railway system of Almería. It is, however, the chief market for the rich agricultural districts towards the south and for the argentiferous lead and other mines among the mountains. In appearance it is modern, with wide streets, two fine squares, and a parish church in Doric style, dating from 1758. But in reality the town is of considerable antiquity. One of the towers in the Moorish palace owned by the marquesses of Villafranca is probably of Roman origin.
CUFF. (1) (Of uncertain origin), the lower edge of a sleeve turned back to show an ornamental border, or with an addition of lace or trimming; now used chiefly of the stiff bands of linen worn under the coat-sleeve either loose or attached to the shirt. (2) Also uncertain in origin, but with no connexion, probably, with (1), a blow with the hand either open or closed, as opposed to the use of weapons.
CUIRASS (Fr. cuirasse, Lat. coriaceus, made of leather, from
corium, the original breastplate being of leather), the plate
armour, whether formed of a single piece of metal or other rigid
material or composed of two or more pieces, which covers the
