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