II. NATURE OF THE SOUL
The nature of the soul from the standpoint of Plotinian metaphysics was treated by Henry More in his two poetical treatises, “Pyschathanasia” and “Anti-psychopannychia.” In the former he follows the course of the argument set forth in the seventh book of the fourth “Ennead” of Plotinus. In the Plotinian defence two propositions are established; namely, that the soul is not body, and that it is not a function of body. By demonstrating these, it followed that the soul is an immaterial thing, a real being, and consequently eternal. This is the drift of More’s argument in “Psychathanasia.” The first and second books are devoted to the establishment of the definition of the soul as an incorporeal substance, and the proof of its incorporeality is deduced from considerations of its functions.
The soul, More holds, is an incorporeal thing because it is a self-moving substance present in all forms of life. Plotinus had taught that soul was everywhere. “First, then,” he says, “let every soul consider this: how by breathing life into them soul made all animals, the creatures of earth, sea, air, the divine stars in heaven; made the sun, made the great firmament above us, and not only made but ordered it, so that it swings round in due course. Yet is this soul a different nature from what it orders, and moves, and vivifies. It must needs then be more precious than its creations. For they are born, and when the soul which ministers their life abandons them, they die; but the soul ever is because it never abandons itself.” (“Enneads,” V. i. 2.) More finds this soul present in the growth of all forms of vegetation, the sphere spermatic (I. ii. 30), in the life of animals, sensation, and self-directed motion; and in the intellectual life of man. (I. ii. 17–22.)
“Thus have I trac’d the soul in all its works,
And severall conditions have displaid,
And show’d all places where so e’r she lurks,
Even her own lurkings of her self bewray’d,
In plants, in beasts, in men, while here she staid.”
(I. ii. 23.)
He next demonstrates that this soul is a self-moving substance. It is self-moving in plants, as the quickening power of the sun on vegetation shows. Through the heat of the sun the hidden centre, or soul, is called into the life of blossoming and growth.
“Thus called out by friendly sympathie
Their souls move of themselves on their Centreitie.”
(I. ii. 31.)
In animals the self-moving soul is manifested in motion and the life of sensation.
“Then be the souls of beasts self-moving forms,
Bearing their bodies as themselves think meet,
Invited or provok’d, so they transform
At first themselves within, then straight in sight
Those motions come, which suddenly do light
Upon the bodies visible, which move
According to the will of th’ inward spright.”
(I. ii. 36.)
In man the self-motion of the soul is present in the activity of reason, whether as the presiding power in all of the operations of the image-making faculty, or as the contemplative and speculative power. (I. ii. 41–44.)
After this account of the nature of the soul as a self-moving substance, More addresses himself to the task of showing that all life is immortal. In a time of despondency a Nymph once came and declared to him,
“All life’s immortall: though the outward trunk
May changed be, yet life to nothing never shrunk.”
(I. iii. 17.)
According to the theory unfolded by the Nymph there is an ever present unity in all things which is the true source of their life. This is God. From Him are six descending degrees of existence, called intellectual, psychical, imaginative, sensitive, plantal, or spermatic. (I. iii. 23.) Below all of these is matter, which is nothing but mere potentiality, or the possibility of all created things. (I. iv. 9.) Though these various degrees of life are distinct, they are manifestations of the one pervading unity. (I. iii. 25.) Matter thus cannot be the prop and stay of life. (I. iii. 26.)
The second proof of the incorporeal nature of the soul is found in the character of its functions. After a hasty attack on the doctrine of materialism in the form of a reductio ad absurdum (II. ii. 13–25; cf. Plotinus, IV. vii. 3), More shows, first, that the faculty within us by which we are aware of the outward world of sense is one and individual, yet everywhere present in the body. (II. ii. 32.) This faculty, called “the common sense” (II. ii. 26), sits as judge over all the data of sense knowledge (cf. Plotinus, IV. vii. 6); it decides in case of disagreement between two senses, and distinguishes clearly between the objects present to each sense. (II. ii. 28.) The common sense must be one, else, being divided, it would breed confusion in consciousness (II. ii. 31); and it must be everywhere present in the body because it shows no partiality to any sense, but has intelligence of all equally. (II. ii. 32.)
The rational powers of the soul are a further proof of the soul’s incorporeal nature. The first consideration draws attention to the vast scope of man’s will and soul. In the virtuous the soul can be so universalized and begotten into the life of God that the will embraces all with a tender love and is ever striving to seek God as the good. (II. iii. 6.) If this is so, More asks whether the soul thus universalized can ever die. (II. iii. 7.) Man’s understanding, too, can become so broadened that it can apprehend God’s true being, not knowing it, to be sure, in its true essence, but having such a true insight that it can reject all narrow conceptions of His nature and welcome other more comprehensive ideas as closer approximations to the truth. The understanding is in a state that More calls parturient; God under certain conditions can be born within the soul. (II. iii. 9–12.) For the reason, then, of the vastness of the power of will and understanding More holds that the soul cannot be a body. (II. iii. 4.)
The next argument in regard to the rational powers of the soul centres about her power of pure abstraction. (Cf. “Enneads,” IV. vii. 8.) In herself the soul divests matter of all time and place relations and views the naked, simple essence of things. (II. iii. 18.) She thus frames within herself an idea, which is indivisible and unextended; and by this she judges outward objects. (II. iii. 18–20; cf. “Enneads,” IV. vii. 12.) This property is not a property of body. (II. iii. 26.)
At this point More closes the first division of his argument. By establishing the definition of the soul as a self-moving substance, and by an account of the nature of its functions, he has defended his first proposition, that the soul is an incorporeal thing. He then passes on to the second part of his argument, that the soul is an incorporeal thing because it is independent of the body.
This portion of his defence falls into four main divisions. In the first he explains the nature of the body’s dependence upon the soul. Through the power that the soul has by virtue of its lowest centre of life, called the plantal, the soul frames the body in order to exercise through it the functions of life. (III. i. 17.) The more perfect this body is the more awake the soul is. (III. i. 17.) But after the work of framing the body is finished, the soul dismisses it as an old thought and begins its life of contemplation. (III. i. 16.) The main desire is to see God. (III. ii. 11.) Next More shows how the soul can direct her own thoughts within herself without in any way considering the body. Her intellectual part dives within her nature in its quest for self-knowledge and her will affects herself after this knowledge has been gained. All this is accomplished free from any bodily assistance. (III. ii. 25, 26.) The third division shows how the soul is so independent of the body that she can resist its desires. Often the sensual impulse of our nature would lead us to be content with mere satisfaction of our bodily desires; but the soul desirous of truth and gifted with an insight into God’s true nature enables us to resist all such impulses. (III. ii. 38, 39.) The fourth division contrasts the vitality of the soul with that of sense, fancy, and memory. These three faculties are weakened by age and by disease, and also by excessive stimulation; but the soul never fades, but grows stronger with each contemplative act. (III. ii. 48, 49, 56.)
The attraction which the philosophy of Plotinus had for More’s mind lay in its scheme of speculative mysticism. The metaphysical system of Plotinus had taught that The One, which is the truly existing being, is everywhere present and yet nowhere wholly present. (“Enneads,” VI. iv.) It had explained also that the only way in which the individual soul could apprehend this truly existing being was by a mystical union with it, in which state the soul did not know in the sense of energizing intellectually, but was one with The One. (“Enneads,” VI. ix. 10.) These two ideas lie at the basis of More’s theosophic mysticism. Their presence can be felt throughout his “Psychathanasia” as its controlling idea and also in his two less important treatises, “Anti-psychopannychia” and “Anti-monopsychia.”
The argument of the “Anti-psychopannychia” and of the “Anti-monopsychia” centres about the doctrine of the mystic union with God. The argument in the “Psychathanasia” is a critique of materialism rather than a positive plea for the existence of the soul after death. It was the purpose of More in his two pendants to his longer poem to treat of the state of the soul after death. That it is not enveloped in eternal night he proves in his “Anti-psychopannychia.” His argument is briefly this: Since God is a unity everywhere present, he is infinite freedom. (II. 2.) Since the soul’s activities of will and intellect are free from dependence upon the body, death will be but the ushering of the soul into the life of God’s large liberty.
“Wherefore the soul cut off from lowly sense
By harmlesse fate, far greater libertie
Must gain: for when it hath departed hence
(As all things else) should it not backward hie
From whence it came? but such divinitie
Is in our souls that nothing lesse than God
Could send them forth (as Plato’s schools descrie)
Wherefore when they retreat a free abode
They’ll find, unlesse kept off by Nemesis just rod.”
(II. 14.)
In this life of union the soul will realize the deep fecundity of her own nature; for in her are innate ideas. To establish this theory of innate ideas into which Plato’s theory of reminiscence has been transformed in Plotinus (cf. “Enneads,” IV. iii. 25), More educes four considerations. They must exist because (1) like is known only by like (II. 31); (2) no object or number of objects can give the soul a universal concept (II. 36); (3) the apprehension of incorporeal things cannot be made by sense, therefore the soul must have the measure of such within her own nature (II. 38, 39); and (4) the process of learning shows that it is education, or the drawing out of the mind what was in it potentially (II. 42). Inasmuch, then, as innate ideas exist within the mind, called out by experience in life, how much more will they be evoked in that high union with God!
“But sith our soul with God himself may meet,
Inacted by his life, I cannot see
What scruple then remains that moven might
Least doubt but that she wakes with open eye,
When fate her from this body doth untie.
Wherefore her choisest forms do then arise,
Rowz’d up by union and large sympathy
With Gods own spright: she plainly then descries
Such plentitude of life, as she could nere devise.”
(III. 2.)
But this union of the soul with The One may be thought to obliterate self-identity after death and teach only a universal absorption of all souls into The One. To combat this idea More contends in his “Anti-monopsychia” that by virtue of the “Deiformity” of the soul, by which he means its ability to be joined with God, the soul in death is so
“quickned with near Union
With God, that now wish’d for vitalitie
Is so encreas’d, that infinitely sh’ has fun
Herself, her deep’st desire unspeakably hath wonne.
“And deep desire is the deepest act,
The most profound and centrall energie,
The very selfnesse of the soul, which backt
With piercing might, she breaks out, forth doth flie
From dark contracting death, and doth descrie
Herself unto herself; so thus unfold
That actual life she straightwayes saith, is I.”
(Stz. 35, 36.)
In the “Psychathanasia” the Plotinian doctrines of the immanent unity of The One and of the mystical union of the soul with it are not so much present as positive arguments incorporated in the sequence of thought, but are felt as controlling ideas in the mind of the writer. The reason for this lies in the fact that in the argument of Plotinus (IV. vii) these two truths of his philosophy are not specifically elaborated. To More, however, as indeed to all students of Plotinian metaphysics, these are the significant ideas of his system. More thus brings them in at opportune times throughout his argument in “Psychathanasia.”
The conception of the ever present unity of The One in all things is the fundamental idea in the first division of his thought. The tenacity with which he clings to this doctrine is remarkable. His argument had brought him to the point where he had shown that all life—of plants and animals, as well as of men—was immortal. What, then, is the state of the plantal and animal soul after death? (I. ii. 49–53.) More does not answer directly, but replies that although men cannot know this, it is not permitted to reason it down.
“But it’s already clear that ’tis not right
To reason down the firm subsistencie
Of things from ignorance of their propertie.”
(I. ii. 59.)
Consequently when he comes to consider man’s immortality, he says that all the preceding argument—the general reflection on the “self-motion and centrall stabilitie” of the soul—may be dismissed as needless.
“Onely that vitalitie,
That doth extend this great Universall,
And move th’ inert Materialitie
Of great and little worlds, that keep in memorie.”
(II. i. 7.)
It is because of the firm conviction with which he holds to the conception of the pervading unity of The One that he expands the idea at length in the third and fourth cantos of the first book.
The second idea, that of the mystical union of the individual soul with The One, is an incentive to More’s thought and feelings throughout the course of his entire argument. From the fact that the soul can dive as deep as matter, and rise to the height of a blissful union with God, he derives the necessary inspiration for his “mighty task.”
“This is the state of th’ ever-moving soul,
Whirling about upon its circling wheel;
Certes to sight it variously doth roll,
And as men deem full dangerously doth reel,
But oft when men fear most, itself doth feel
In happiest plight conjoin’d with that great Sun
Of lasting blisse, that doth himself reveal
More fully then, by that close union,
Though men, that misse her here, do think her quite undone.”
(I. ii. 8.)
When in the course of his argument he arrives at a discussion of the rational power of the soul, he launches out into a treatment of the vast scope of man’s will and mind which
“should bring forth that live Divinity
Within ourselves, if once God would consent
To shew his specious form and nature eminent:
“For here it lies like colours in the night
Unseen and unregarded, but the sunne
Displayes the beauty and the gladsome plight
Of the adorned earth, while he doth runne
His upper stage. But this high prize is wonne
By curbing sense and the self seeking life
(True Christian mortification)
Thus God will his own self in us revive,
If we to mortifie our straightened selves do strive.”
(II. iii. 12, 13.)
Again, when his argument brings him to the point at which the independence of soul from body is to be proved, he breaks out with an exclamation of the bliss of that union of soul with God, when
“reason shines out bright,
And holy love with mild serenity
Doth hug her harmlesse self in this her purity;”
(III. ii. 28.)
and passes on to a description of The One as seen in the vision
“Unplac’d, unparted, one close Unity,
Yet omnipresent; all things, yet but one;
Not streak’d with gaudy multiplicity,
Pure light without discolouration,
Stable without circumvolution,
Eternal rest, joy without passing sound.”
(III. ii. 36.)
Finally in the last canto of his third book he testifies to the vanity of that knowledge of the reasons for the soul’s immortality, even as he had given them (III. ii. 11), and confesses that the only sure stay in the storm of life is a faith in “the first Good.”
“But yet, my Muse, still take an higher flight,
Sing of Platonick Faith in the first Good,
That Faith that doth our souls to God unite
So strongly, tightly, that the rapid floud
Of this swift flux of things, nor with foul mud
Can stain, nor strike us off from th’ unity,
Wherein we steadfast stand, unshak’d, unmov’d,
Engrafted by a deep vitality
The prop and stay of things is Gods benignity.”
(III. iv. 14.)
As in his “Psychozoia” it was noted how the omnipresence of Psyche appealed to More’s religious sense of the nearness of God to His children, so in his other treatises, especially his “Psychathanasia,” the mystical union of the soul with The One is for More another name for the love of God as known in the soul of the Christian. The Christian religion had taught that God is love, a conception far removed from Platonism, whether of the dialogues or of the “Enneads” of Plotinus. But the tendency to find in Platonism a rational sanction for religious truth was so strong in the theology of the Cambridge school, to which More belonged, that this conception of God as love—which, indeed, is held by the Christian not as an idea but as a fact of his inmost religious experience—was interpreted in the light of the speculative mysticism of Plotinus; and thus the formless One, the ultra-metaphysical principle above all being, became the Christian God of love.