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← ExitThe Manly Hall Manuscript Collection, Volume I

Reading language

Lucretius Ovid and the Parts of the Human Being

in the preparation of the regulus of Mars. Now, since the elements are exceedingly pure within metals themselves, strongly and analytically mixed, and multiplied infinitely, metals contain more germinative spirits. This causes their renewal, regeneration, and glorification to change more easily and swiftly into a more excellent and perfect form—a secret of the art that does not deserve contempt.

To fill every mind entirely with a Christian and natural philosophy, and to lead them out of this labyrinth of renewal, regeneration, and resurrection, we shall undertake to explain the difference between them. We shall explain it according to the judgment of Lucretius and Ovid, who in several places have sufficiently explained this truth in these terms.

Lucretius

‘What had previously come forth from the earth returns willingly into the earth, and what was

sent from Heaven is received once more into Heaven’s shining palaces.’

Ovid

‘The human being is composed of four things: manes, flesh, spirit, and shadow. Earth covers the flesh; the shadow flits around the tomb; the manes are in the underworld, and the spirit ascends again into the heavens.’

The judgments of these two poets sufficiently disclose everything we have to say on this subject: the difference between body and its shadow, between spirit and soul, and their representation explained more clearly than daylight. Likewise, we must clarify what renewal of bodies is, what the forms extracted from them are, what regeneration and rectification are, and what glorification and resurrection are in natural philosophy or metaphysics. The first man of the same people knows that a dead body, called a corpse, differs entirely from its shadow

and that both differ from spirit and soul as much as the elements differ from Heaven; or else that both separate from their manes and shadows, which are merely phantoms representing them. It is certain that the spirit containing the principles of renewal and regeneration is in no way the body and shadow, these manes and the soul; nor can it be said to be the soul, which is immortal and rational and bears the character of its heavenly and divine nature and source. Flesh is spirit and shadow. Who would wish to take, for the shadow itself, the spirit, soul, and body of which it is merely the image, or a gross shadow representing it only as a vegetative form drawn from its ashes? Likewise, one cannot take the manes for the soul: they are merely representations and certain modes of operation of the soul’s inclinations, which even after death strongly and violently occupy the

fantasy or imagination. For the imaginative faculty is intermediate between soul and senses and retains something of the body, its species and representations, fitting itself to receive the images and phantoms of things. Thus these species, strongly impressed upon imagination, occupy it even after death and endure eternally. They will therefore contribute to happiness if good, and unhappiness if bad, and torment those who think upon them, as the poets tell of Tantalus’s hunger, Midas’s desire, Sardanapalus’s shameful fires, and the punishments of Sisyphus and Ixion. Then the soul, as if darkened by the vegetative faculty, is delivered to the rule of fantasy and the tyranny of the passions. In this way the damned are tormented by countless horrible phantoms and dreadful affections, because of the rust of the stains of their bodies, according as their character is impressed upon this

faculty of the soul, from which it can scarcely be effaced. That is why they gave the name manes to these affections and operations of fantasy. You may read much on this subject in Agrippa, where different opinions about the human being after death are found. These ideas of the form or rational soul, and of figures remaining after death or after the separation of soul and body, are known through forms that remain even after the body’s dissolution. For just as representations of the soul, or essential or animal form, remain after human death, so after the corpse’s dissolution its accidental or individual form, strongly impressed upon it and engraved with an inseparable character, are outside—as happens in the reborn forms of plants, as we have said. It ordinarily happens, especially in summer when the heat burns most cruelly, that a buried corpse putrefies and becomes corrupted, both

through its own heat and through the external heat that comes to its aid; and that in putrefying it gives off many vapors. Because of their excessive moisture and oiliness, they are drunk up by the earth and penetrate its pores. Even if they passed through, they could nevertheless unfold nothing because of the confusion of different substances and the disturbance caused by heterogeneities. When these caliginous(?) fumes have been dissipated by complete corruption—that is, when the corpse is reduced to dust—it awaits some period of its digestion until these forms attached to the ashes are freed from the bonds of matter. Then, to bring these vegetative forms outside, it happens that these trembling spiritual vapors pass through the pores of earth recently disturbed, because their subtlety and tenuity prevent their being retained, and they coagulate through the force of the cold air that

surrounds them. This happens toward evening, at sunset, and their coagulated form resembles that of the corpse; it is called a shadow and cannot be taken for the body. They have said that these shadows of forms, these terrors, were lemures, specters, manes, and wicked Nemesis, whom they make wander and circle around burial places, tombs, and places appointed for interring bodies. But these are poets’ tales that frighten and entertain, and mere trifles rather than incontestable arguments that the souls of these pagans and profane persons return and wander around their bodies and graves. Although some imagine that spirit is not distinct from soul and that philosophers share this view, if they examine the matter more closely they will perceive great differences, not in a few but in many things. For this vegetative or sensitive spirit—or, as they wish to say, the soul and the vegetative and sensitive power—

from which comes the principle of all generation, nutrition, vegetation, and sensation—is distinguished from matter, soul, and shadow, partaking of none of them. For before the soul is infused into the body, the body receives this spirit and is spiritualized through it; otherwise it would lack the principle of vegetation and sensation. Some philosophers hold that the body or embryo, composed of its integral parts, is endowed with the capacity to feel and vegetate before being formed and animated. Spirit also differs from soul in respect of origin: everything fulfilling the functions of nourishing, generating, nourishing, or increasing has a heavenly origin, and these natural faculties descend only from the heavenly bodies upon sublunary things. If they flowed from the soul, which comes immediately from God, they would share in many things with rational animals. Their difference is still better discerned through their operations, which differ as much from one another as the faculties

358.The regulus of Mars names the metallic preparation in which the author says the star-form is visible. Mars supplies the iron-related name of the preparation; the text does not give its recipe here.

359.The source reads analytiquement, retained as ‘analytically’, although its precise relation to the strong mixture is unusual. The author next proposes to distinguish renewal, regeneration, and resurrection through poetic passages.

360.The manuscript heads the fourfold account ‘Ovid’. The translation preserves that attribution as a feature of this witness. Manes is retained as the distinct term subsequently analyzed by the author, rather than collapsed into spirit or soul.

361.Le premier homme du même peuple is an unusual expression, retained as ‘the first man of the same people’. The argument begins with the readily perceived difference between a corpse and its shadow, then proceeds to finer distinctions.

362.The germinative spirit is distinguished both from the corpse and shadow and from the immortal rational soul. It carries the principles of renewal and regeneration, while the soul is characterized by reason and its divine source.

363.La chair est esprit et ombre is the manuscript’s statement, although the surrounding argument distinguishes these terms. It is retained without inserting a negative or changing est to et. The following sentence’s order is similarly difficult and remains explicit.

364.Species are the received likenesses or representations of things in the account of imagination. The author places imagination between soul and senses and assigns persistent postmortem effects to strongly imprinted species.

365.The named poetic punishments illustrate the continuing action of desire and passion. The explanation of misery is internal as well as bodily: imagination and passions exercise a tyranny over the soul.

366.Manes is here defined as affections and operations of fantasy whose impressions are difficult to erase. Compare Agrippa, De occulta philosophia III.41, which presents the same sequence of Lucretius and verses attributed to Ovid, followed by postmortem distinctions. This is a textual parallel, not proof of the manuscript’s immediate source; the manuscript itself names no book or chapter.

367.The argument compares persistence of the soul’s representations with persistence of an individual bodily form after dissolution. The source’s singular sa forme … sont dehors shifts to a plural verb; English leaves the irregular ‘are outside’ visible rather than supplying a mechanism of emergence.

368.Expliquer can mean unfolding or displaying as well as explaining. Here the argument concerns vapors unable to present a distinct form while unlike substances remain confused together.

369.The adjective after fumées is uncertain, provisionally read calioneuses. ‘Caliginous’ (dark or misty) is a tentative interpretation, marked in English; the exact source marks are retained in a facsimile crop. Digestion continues the manuscript’s processing vocabulary for the interval of decomposition and release.

370.The explanation presented is coagulation of tenuous vapors in cold surrounding air. The resulting shadow resembles a corpse but is expressly distinguished from the body itself.

371.The author disputes the inference from graveyard apparitions to returning rational souls, classifying that inference as poetic storytelling. His vocabulary still distinguishes the vegetative or sensitive spirit from the rational soul, a distinction continued on the next page.

372.The text separates vegetative and sensitive activity from the infusion of the rational soul. Its embryological claim is attributed to some philosophers, while the spirit supplies the body’s prior principles of growth and sensation.

373.Two origins are distinguished: natural faculties descend from the heavenly bodies, whereas the soul comes immediately from God. Nourrir appears twice in the French list and ‘nourishing’ is deliberately repeated in English.