More, Henry (1614-1687)

The Immortality of the Soul, so Farre Forth as it is Demonstrable from the Knowledge of Nature and the Light of Reason

London

Printed by J. Flesher, for William Morden

1659

"As first the Frame of the Body, of which I think most reasonable to conclude the Soule her self to be the more particular Architect (for I will not wholly reject Plotinus his opinion;) and that the Plastick power resides in her, as also in the Soules of Brute animals, as very learned and worthy Writers have determined."

2. As first the Frame of the Body, of which I think most reasonable to conclude the Soule her self to be the more particular Architect (for I will not wholly reject Plotinus his opinion;) and that the Plastick power resides in her, as also in the Soules of Brute animals, as very learned and worthy Writers have determined. That the Fabrick of the Body is out of the concurse of Atomes, is a meer precarious Opinion, without any ground or reason. For Sense does not discover any such thing, the first rudiments of life being out of some liquid homogeneall Matter; and it is against reason, that the tumbling of Atomes or corporeall particles should produce such exquisite frames of creatures, wherein the acutest wit is not able to find any thing inept, but all done exquisitely wel everywhere, where the foulness and courseness of Matter has not been in fault. That God is not the immediate Maker of these Bodyes, the particular miscarriages demonstrate. For there is no Matter so perverse and stubborn but his Omnipotency could tame; whence there would be no Defects nor Monstrosities in the generation of Animals. Nor is it so congruous to admit, that the Plastick faculty of the Soul of the World is the sole contriver of these Fabricks of particular creatures (though I will not deny but she may give some rude preparative stroaks towards Efformation:) but that in every particular world, such as Man is especially, his own Soule is the peculiar and most perfective Architect thereof, as the Soule of the World is of it. For this vitall Fabrication is not as in artificiall Architecture, when an external person acts upon Matter, but implies a more particular and near union with that Matter it thus intrinsecally shapes out and organizes. And what ought to have a more particular and close union with our Bodies then our Souls themselves? My opinion is therefore, That the Soule, which is a Spirit, and therefore contractible and dilatable, begins within less compass at first in Organizing the fitly-prepared Matter, and so bears it self on in the same tenour of work till the Body has attained its full growth; and that the Soule dilates it self in the dilating of the Body, and so possesses it through all the members thereof.
(II.10, pp. 216-8)

Architecture::Architect Population

Reading Simon Varey, Space and the Eighteenth-Century English Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990), 57.

Henry More, The Immortality of the Soul, so Farre Forth as it is Demonstrable from the Knowledge of Nature and the Light of Reason (London: Printed by J. Flesher, for William Morden, 1659). <Link to EEBO>

12/23/2011