< Ancient Opinions Upon Psychic Bodies (continued from page 10-251) >
doctrines of the master among modern Platonists, Thomas Taylor (Introduction: Phædo). “After this our divine philosopher informs that the pure soul will after death return to pure and eternal natures; hut that the impure soul, in consequence of its being imbued with terrene affections, will be drawn down to a kindred nature, and be invested with a gross vehicle capable of being seen by the corporeal eye.* For while a propensity to body remains in the soul, it causes her to attract a certain vehicle to herself, either of an aerial nature, or composed from the spirit and vapours of her terrestrial body, or which is recently collected from surrounding air; for according to the arcana of the Platonic philosophy, between an ethereal body, which is simple and immaterial, and is the eternal connate vehicle of the soul, and a terrene body, which is material and composite, and of short duration, there is an aerial body, which is material indeed, but simple and of a more extended duration; and in this body the unpurified soul dwells for a long time after its exit from hence, till this pneumatic vehicle being dissolved, it is again invested with a composite body; while, on the contrary, the purified soul immediately ascends into the celestial regions with its ethereal vehicle alone.” Always it is the disposition of the soul that deter-mines the quality of its body. “However the soul be in itself affected,” says Porphyry (translated by Cudworth), “so does it always find a body suitable and agreeable to its present disposition, and therefore to the purged soul does naturally accrue a body that comes next to immateriality, that is, an ethereal one.” And the same author, “The soul is never quite naked of all body, but hath always some body or other joined with it, suitable and agreeable to its present disposition (either a purer or impurer one). But that at its first quitting this gross earthly body, the spirituous body which accompanieth it (as its vehicle) must needs go away fouled and incrassated with the vapours and steams thereof, till the soul afterwards by degrees purging itself, this becometh at length a dry splendour, which hath no misty obscurity nor casteth any shadow.” Here, it will be seen, we lo.se sight of the specific difference of the two future vehicles—the ethereal is regarded as a sublimation of the aerial. This, however, is opposed to the general consensus of Plato’s commentators. Sometimes the ethereal body, or augoeides, is appropriated to the rational soul, or spirit, which must then be considered as a distinct entity, separable from the lower soul. Philoponus, a Christian writer, says “that the rational soul, as to its energy, is separable from all body, but the irrational part or life thereof is separable only from this gross body, and not from all body whatsoever, but hath after death a spirituous or airy body, in which it acteth; this, I say, is a true opinion which shall afterwards be proved by us… The irrational life of the soul hath not all its being in this gross earthly body, but remaineth after the soul’s departure out of it, having for its vehicle and subject the spirituous body, which itself is also compounded out of the four elements, but receiveth its denomination from the predominant part, to wit, air, as this gross body of ours is called earthy from what is most predominant therein.”—Cudworth, Intell. Syst. From the same source we extract the following:—“Wherefore these ancients say that impure souls after their departure out of this body wander here up and down for a certain space in their spirituous, vaporous, and airy body, appearing about sepulchres and haunting their former habitation. For which cause there is great reason that we should take care of living well, as also of abstaining from a fouler and grosser diet; these ancients telling us likewise that this spirituous body of ours being fouled and incrassated by evil diet, is apt to render the soul in this life also more obnoxious to the disturbances of passions. They further add that there is something of the Plantal or Plastic life, also exercised by the soul, in those spirituous or airy bodies after death; they being nourished, too, though not after the same manner, as those gross earthy bodies of ours are here, but by vapours, and that not by parts or organs, but throughout the whole of them (as sponges), they imbibing everywhere those vapours. For which cause they who are wise will in this life also take care of using a thinner and drier diet, that so that spirituous body (which we have also at this present time within our proper body) may not be clogged and incrassed, but attenuated. Over and above which those ancients made use of catharms, or purgations, to the same end and purpose also. For as this earthy body is washed by water, so is that spirituous body cleansed by cathartic vapours, some of these vapours being nutritive, others purgative. Moreover, these ancients further declared concerning this spirituous body that it was not organised, but did the whole of it in every part throughout exercise all functions of sense, the soul hearing, seeing, and perceiving all sensibles by it everywhere. For which cause Aristotle himself affirmeth in his metaphysics that there is properly but one sense and one sensory. He by this one sensory meaneth the spirit, or subtle airy body, in which the sensitive power doth all of it through the whole immediately apprehend all variety of sensibles. And if it be demanded how it comes to pass that this spirit becomes organised in sepulchres, and most commonly of human form, but sometimes in the forms of other animals? to this those ancients replied that their appearing so frequently in human form proceeded from their being incrassated with evil diet, and then, as it were, stamped upon with the form of this exterior ambient body in which they are, as crystal is formed and coloured like to those things which it is fastened in, or reflects the image of them. And that their having sometimes other different forms proceedeth from the fantastic power of the soul itself, which can at pleasure transform the spirituous body into any shape. For being airy, when it is condensed and fixed, it becometh visible, and again invisible and vanishing out of sight when it is expanded and rarified.”—Proem in Arist. De Anima. And Cudworth says: “Though spirits or ghosts had certain supple bodies which they could so far condense as to make them sometimes visible to men, yet is it reasonable enough to think that they could not constipate or fix them into such a firmness, grossness, and solidity as that of flesh and bone is to continue therein, or at least not without such diffi-<... continues on page 10-253 >
* This is the Hindu theory of nearly every one of the Aryan philosophies.— Ed. Theosophist.