Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

Spectator, No. 90

London

Wednesday, June 13, 1711

"The very Substance of the Soul is festered with them, the Gangrene is gone too far to be ever cured; the Inflammation will rage to all Eternity."

There is not, in my Opinion, a Consideration more effectual to extinguish inordinate Desires in the Soul of Man, than the Notions of Plato and his Followers upon that Subject. They tell us, that every Passion which has been contracted by the Soul during her Residence in the Body, remains with her in a separate State; and that the Soul in the Body or out of the Body, differs no more than the Man does from himself when he is in his House, or in open Air. When therefore the obscene Passions in particular have once taken Root and spread themselves in the Soul, they cleave to her inseparably, and remain in her for ever, after the Body is cast off and thrown aside. As an Argument to confirm this their Doctrine they observe, that a lewd Youth who goes on in a continued Course of Voluptuousness, advances by Degrees into a libidinous old Man; and that the Passion survives in the Mind when it is altogether dead in the Body; nay, that the Desire grows more violent, and (like all other Habits) gathers Strength by Age, at the same time that it has no Power of executing its own Purposes. If, say they, the Soul is the most subject to these Passions at a time when it has the least Instigations from the Body, we may well suppose she will still retain them when she is entirely divested of it. The very Substance of the Soul is festered with them, the Gangrene is gone too far to be ever cured; the Inflammation will rage to all Eternity.
(I, 380-1)

Body::Disease::Gangrene

The very Substance of the Soul is festered with them, the Gangrene is gone too far to be ever cured; the Inflammation will rage to all Eternity.

See Donald Bond's edition: The Spectator, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965).

03/22/2013