Knowledge is not a passion from without the mind, but an active exertion of the inward strength, vigor and power of the mind, displaying itself from within.

He dwelt on the action of law rejected the continuous exercise of miraculous intervention pointed out the fact that in the natural world there are "errors" and "bungles" and argued vigorously in favor of the origin and maintenance of the universe as a slow and gradual development of Nature in obedience to an inward principle. His only surviving child Damaris a devout and talented woman became the second wife of Sir Francis Masham. 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.

Ralph Cudworth (1617 – 26 June 1688) was an English philosopher the leader of the Cambridge Platonists.