the propagation and production of the human form were analogous to those of other forms, and were the proper effect of that power which had been communicated to matter by the Deity.12 Being is thus organized from God to matter, by the retraction of God, and from matter to God by the evolution of the latent divine powers of matter. Milton has a conception of natural laws, which he calls "natural necessity" (he has been careful to point out that God is not subject to it 1) and which work in the reproduction of species. Thus Adam meditates: what if thy son Prove disobedient, and reprov'd, retort, Wherefore didst thou beget me? I sought it not; That proud excuse? Yet him not thy election Different names may be given to this Miltonic system: it is pantheism, it is materialism, and yet it can be called spiritualism; for Milton, the spirit contains matter, and matter is only a part of that Spirit who is God. The origin of matter is thus explained: For spirit being the more excellent substance, virtually and essentially contains within itself the inferior one; as the spiritual and rational faculty contains the corporal, that is, the sentient and vegetative faculty. For not even divine virtue and efficiency could produce bodies out of nothing, . . unless there had been some bodily power in the substance of God; since no one can give to another what he does not himself possess.15 And both (intelligence and reason) contain Within them ev'ry lower faculty Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste.16 12 Treatise, IV, 195. 14 P. L., X, 760–65. 15 Treatise, IV, 181. In reality, however, Milton is neither materialist nor spiritualist: he acknowledges no distinction between spirit and matter, the only difference being from the lesser to the greater degree. The body is for him the agglomeration of sensorial faculties, and the spirit that of the higher; and the two orders shade into each other, "till body up to spirit works." Therefore for Milton the question of the existence of the soul is suppressed. Or, to put it in a negative form, Milton does not believe in the existence of the soul. Body and soul are for him one and the same thing. The word "soul" is merely an abstract expression which separates arbitrarily the higher from the lower faculties and corresponds to no separate reality: ... ... man became a living soul; whence it may be inferred that man is a living being, intrinsically and properly one and individual, not compound or separable, not, according to the common opinion, made up and framed of two distinct and different natures, as of soul and body, but the whole man is soul, and the soul man, that is to say, a body, or substance individual, animated, sensitive and rational. And again: 17 that the spirit of man should be separate from the body, so as to have a perfect and intelligent existence independently of it, the doctrine is evidently at variance both with nature and reason. . . . For the word soul is applied to every kind of living being, Iyet it is never inferred from these expressions that the soul exists separate from the body in any of the brute creation.18 Man has been created similar to animals, and Milton insists on the point: There seems therefore no reason why the soul of man should be made an exception to the general law of creation. For . . . God 18 Ibid., IV, 189. 17 Treatise, IV, 188. breathed the breath of life into other living beings, and blended it . . intimately with matter. 19 ... he infused the breath of life into other living beings also; every living thing receives animation from one and the same source of life and breath. . . . Nor has the word spirit any other meaning in the sacred writings, but that breath of life which we inspire, or the vital, or sensitive, or rational faculty, or some action or affection belonging to those faculties.20 For Milton knows that the Hebrews did not believe in the existence of the soul, in our sense: "... in the Scripture idiom, the soul is generally often put for the whole animate body. . . ." So we have in Paradise Lost: And 21 And God said: let the waters generate Reptile with spawn abundant, living soul.22 Let th' Earth bring forth fowl living in her kind, What is called "soul" is propagated naturally in the course of generation: It would seem, therefore, that the human soul is not created daily by the immediate act of God, but propagated from father to son in natural order. . . .24 If the soul be equally diffused throughout any given whole, and throughout every part of that whole, how can the human seed, the noblest and most intimate part of all the body, be imagined destitute and devoid of the soul of the parents, or at least of the father, when communicated to the son by the laws of generation ?25 For matter produces life and all forms, including the soul: "It is acknowledged by the common consent of 19 Ibid., IV, 195. 20 Ibid., IV, 188. 21 Ibid., IV, 281, and the foregoing quotations. 22 P. L., VII, 387-88. 23 P. L., VII, 451-53. 24 Treatise, IV, 189. 25 Ibid., IV, 192–93. almost all philosophers, that every form, to which class the human soul must be considered as belonging, is produced by the power of matter.” 26 All this is only the normal development of the idea contained in Milton's phrase about matter being the "productive stock of every subsequent good." IV. DEATH AND RESURRECTION BODY AND SPIRIT In this cosmology, there is no place for death. Immortality is a direct consequence of the way the world is built, since "no created thing can be finally annihilated." Matter is divine and indestructible, and man has no soul that can be separated from his body. Therefore, every being is naturally and normally immortal. Milton has adopted the view that death is merely a sort of cosmological incident of no particular importance, more or less equivalent to a sleep of matter. Death was brought into the world as a punishment of and a cleansing from sin. But for sin, death would not have existed; Adam and his children would have been transformed into spirits" in the natural course of their evolution. The angel tells Adam: And from these corporal nutriments, perhaps, Here or in heav'nly Paradises, dwell; If ye be found obedient.27 The body is destined to become spirit; that is, a substance similar to matter but more subtle, more lasting and better. Pure spirit exists no more for Milton than 27 P. L., V, 496-501. 26 Ibid., IV, 193. "soul." A spirit is a being superior to man in its higher faculties, but essentially made of a more subtle body than man's. It seems evident that in Milton's mind, God himself the manifest God, that is, the Creating Sonis a spirit of this kind, so that all he had to do was to "retire" his higher faculties from a part of that substance of his to create matter, made up of his lower faculties, with latent possibilities left of the higher ones. This conception of "spirit" is best illustrated by the passage on love among the angels: To whom the angel, with a smile that glowed Answered, Let it suffice thee that thou know'st As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul.28 Death was then brought into the world by Sin. "The death of the body is to be considered in the light of a punishment for sin." 20 Therefore, in the allegory of the second book of Paradise Lost, Death is born of Sin, and in the tenth book Sin introduces Death into the Earth. Even Nature would have been immortal had not man sinned: "All nature is likewise subject to mortality and a curse on account of man.' That is why when Eve fell, 99 30 28 Ibid., VIII, 618-29. Milton's conception of love might be by many thought as material" as his conception of "spirit" or "soul." 29 Treatise, IV, 269. 30 Ibid., IV, 260. |