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"I justified my use of the word Spirit in that Sense from the Authorities of Cicero and Virgil, applying the Latin word Spiritus, from whence Spirit is derived, to the Soul as a thinking Thing, without excluding Materiality out of it. To which your Lordship replies,*That Cicero, in his Tusculan Questions, supposes the Soul not to be a finer sort of Body, but of a different Nature from the Body.—That he calls the Body the Prison of the Soul.—And says, That a wise Man's Business is to draw off his Soul from his Body."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Author

Locke, John (1632-1704)

Work Title

Mr. Locke's Reply to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Worcester's Answer to his Second Letter

Place of Publication

London

Publisher

Printed by H.C. for A. and J. Churchill, and C. Castle

Date

1699

Metaphor

"I justified my use of the word Spirit in that Sense from the Authorities of Cicero and Virgil, applying the Latin word Spiritus, from whence Spirit is derived, to the Soul as a thinking Thing, without excluding Materiality out of it. To which your Lordship replies,*That Cicero, in his Tusculan Questions, supposes the Soul not to be a finer sort of Body, but of a different Nature from the Body.—That he calls the Body the Prison of the Soul.—And says, That a wise Man's Business is to draw off his Soul from his Body."

Metaphor in Context

I justified my use of the word Spirit in that Sense from the Authorities of Cicero and Virgil, applying the Latin word Spiritus, from whence Spirit is derived, to the Soul as a thinking Thing, without excluding Materiality out of it. To which your Lordship replies,*That Cicero, in his Tusculan Questions, supposes the Soul not to be a finer sort of Body, but of a different Nature from the Body.—That he calls the Body the Prison of the Soul.—And says, That a wise Man's Business is to draw off his Soul from his Body. And then your Lordship concludes, as is usual, with a Question, Is it possible now to think so great a Man look'd on the Soul but as a modification of the Body, which must be at an end with Life? Answ. No; it is impossible that a Man of so good Sense as Tully, when he uses the word Corpus or Body for the gross and visible parts of a Man, which he acknowledges to be mortal, should look on the Soul to be a modification of that Body; in a Discourse wherein he was endeavouring to persuade another, that it was immortal. It is to be acknowledge'd that truly great Men, such as he was, are not wont so manifestly to contradict themselves. He had therefore no Thought concerning the modification of the Body of Man in the Case: He was not such a Trifler as to examin, whether the modification of the Body of a Man was immortal, when that Body it self was mortal: And therefore that which he reports as Dicoearchus's Opinion, he dismisses in the beginning without any more ado, c. 11. But Cicero's was a direct, plain and sensible Enquiry, viz. What the Soul was, to see whether from thence he could discover its Immortality? But in all that Discourse in his first Book of Tusculan Questions, where he lays out so much of his Reading and Reason, there is not one Syllable shewing the least Thought, that the Soul was an immaterial Substance; but many Things directly to the contrary.
(pp. 431-2)