Spirit

Use in the book

Spiritual being is capable of a presence that exceeds bodily location. Traherne describes understanding as a living act and insists that spiritual strength can engage objects too great for physical strength. The adjective thus carries a positive claim about activity, reach, and value, not merely the negation of matter.

In prayer, however, the Spirit is also the divine comforter who enlightens and quickens the human soul. That relation must not disappear when the reader encounters the strong language of likeness between created and divine minds. A soul can be made like God in knowledge and love while receiving the power to do so. Spirit’s several senses articulate the possibility of communion, but they do not make every human impulse the action of the Holy Ghost.

Places to read

1. I.94Christ’s will and Spirit ground the prayer for human conformity.
2. I.95The Holy Spirit is invoked as quickener and enlightener.
3. II.76The soul is described as a living act and pure spirit.
4. IV.98Spiritual strength is defended against measures drawn from bodily force.

In this edition

Capitalization assists but does not settle reference. Where the person of the Holy Spirit is plainly invoked, preserve that specificity; where a human spirit is meant, do not import it.

Use in the book

The soul’s instruments

The anatomical digression defines spirit as “the instrument of the soule, to perform all his actions.” The soul is the acting principle; spirits are its instruments. Burton then records other formulations: some make spirit the common bond or medium between body and soul, while Paracelsus calls it a fourth soul in its own right. Melanchthon places the spirits’ origin in the heart and says that they acquire another nature after conveyance to the brain. These are distinct accounts gathered into a short exposition, rather than a single uncontested definition.

The next paragraph gives the threefold scheme. Natural spirits are generated in the liver and distributed by the veins for natural bodily functions. Vital spirits are made in the heart from the natural spirits and conveyed by the arteries; their operation sustains life. Animal spirits are formed from the vital, brought to the brain and distributed through nerves, giving subordinate parts sensation and movement. The opening lists “Brain, Heart, Liver” beside “Natural, Vital, Animal,” but the subsequent sentences supply the actual correspondences: liver–natural, heart–vital, brain–animal. Reading the two initial lists as parallel columns would reverse two of them.

The surrounding anatomy follows the same routes through organs and vessels. Nerves convey animal spirits; arteries convey vital spirits; veins carry blood and natural spirits. The brain’s cavities receive and refine spirits arriving from the heart, and its posterior cavity conveys animal spirits towards the spinal marrow. In this account, subtle means fine enough to serve these bodily operations. It need not mean supernatural or ingenious.

Spirits also explain transitions between activity and inactivity. Sleep is described through the interruption of their passage by vapours; when the obstruction is spent, they resume their usual duties and the senses wake. Voluntary movement has a more elaborate order: reason or imagination apprehends an object, appetite is moved, the moving faculty commands an organ through spirit, and nerves and muscles move the member. The desired object is the end; reason or its subordinate imagination is assigned the efficient role. Spirits convey and execute that movement. Their place in the causal sequence should not be mistaken for independent decision or for the soul’s entire activity.

Disturbance, temperament and imagination

This physiology makes spirits central to the bodily conditions of melancholy. In the account of ill-timed exercise, raw and undigested material is carried into the veins, putrefies and “confounds the animal spirits.” The surrounding argument distinguishes beneficial exercise from excessive, violent or badly timed exercise. In the treatment of overmuch study, weakened bodies and dulled spirits shade into diminished courage: books supposedly consume the Greeks’ “vigor, and martiall spirits.” The first example is a reported physiological process; the second uses bodily depletion and military vigour together in an anti-scholarly argument.

Not every explanation requires a diseased quantity of humour. Hercules de Saxonia’s immaterial melancholy is placed in the spirits alone, through disorders of heat, cold, dryness or moisture. Elsewhere his account of fright emphasizes the spirits’ agitation, contraction and expansion, explicitly excluding a distemper of humours. The symptom chapter again contrasts his spirits-based explanation with accounts of the four humours undergoing adustion. “Immaterial” is the term of this particular controversy. It must not silently be converted either into a modern psychological diagnosis or into a claim that the patient is inhabited by an incorporeal demon. The passage is discussing the immediate causes of bodily and mental symptoms.

The inward-causes chapter treats humours and spirits together as media through which the material body affects the immaterial soul. Their condition can impede the activity of the organs through which the soul works. Burton’s comparison with an untuned lute stresses interdependence: disorder in one part unsettles the rest. Conversely, mental passions change bodily temperature and movement. In the cure, “Imagination enforceth spirits,” spirits compel the nerves, and nerves the limbs. This reciprocal account gives physiological content to emotional disturbance without making the bodily spirits the person’s directing soul.

Darkness, visions and the reasons for fear

In the explanation of symptoms, darkened spirits help account for fear and sorrow. Galen’s model, as Burton presents it, makes the brain and its objects appear dark and threatening through fumes arising from black humours. The explanation is contested: Fracastorius argues for cold rather than internal darkness, and Burton objects to the consequences of that proposal; other authorities attack or defend the Galenic account. The resulting darkness is a proposed internal cause, not simply a decorative synonym for sadness. Burton uses it to explain why ordering a sufferer not to fear can be as ineffective as ordering a wounded person not to feel pain.

The same sequence explains some apparent visions from bodily vapours, impaired sight, sleeplessness or a corrupted imagination. Agitated spirits and humours are said to wander through the brain and produce appearances before the eyes. Misperception, optical devices and deliberate imposture offer further explanations. A person can think he hears spirits because a performer disguises or projects a voice. Burton nevertheless retains a reservation that the Devil may sometimes exploit a disordered person’s condition. His local reassurance through “naturall and inward causes” and his continued belief in some demonic activity must both remain visible.

Created spirits and their disputed powers

The digression on supernatural spirits begins by acknowledging obscurity and disagreement. Burton reports denial of spirits, competing philosophical names and accounts of their origin, then gives the Christian story of Lucifer and his associates as angels created by God and fallen through pride. The lexical distinction between classical dæmones and Christian devils matters: the Platonists, he says, use the name for spirits whether good or bad. Guardians and departed souls enter reported schemes that Burton does not endorse uniformly. Genii are good or bad guardians; in the terminology he assigns to the Stoics, Heroes and Lares name good spirits, Lemures and Larvæ bad ones. In particular he rejects the account that angels and devils are simply the souls of departed people.

He then surveys claims that spirits possess airy bodies, suffer pain, take nourishment, die, assume shapes or move bodies. Bodin’s argument even makes their proper shape round. Burton subsequently says that these paradoxes have been confuted, and distinguishes deceiving the eyes from producing an actual bodily transformation. Yet this rejection is followed by extensive powers he is willing to grant: superior knowledge, conjecture about future events, exploitation of natural properties, deception of the senses and the causing or curing of diseases. His limits include divine permission, the sublunary elements rather than control of the heavens, and the inability to know the secrets of a person’s heart. “Can probably conjecture” is not the same as unbounded knowledge of the future.

Several classifications follow. A ninefold account attributed to schoolmen and divines groups evil spirits by office, from false gods and lying oracles to tempters and accusers. Psellus is said to make six kinds, but Burton’s introductory enumeration names only five: fiery, aerial, terrestrial, watery and subterranean. A later paragraph supplies an unnamed “last” group at the earth’s centre, tormenting the damned. The sequence is an uneven enumeration rather than a clean six-item list. Individual examples bring in fairies, household workers, wandering pucks, mine spirits and supposed ghosts. The categories overlap and their witnesses disagree. For instance, rings in fields are attributed to fairies by some and to natural causes by others; apparent dead people may be explained as impersonations. These are variations within the survey, not a uniform census of observed beings.

Burton’s stance is sometimes more positive than a neutral compilation: he agrees with Bodin that aerial devils cause storms more often than the meteorologists allow. Elsewhere qualifications such as “if we may believe” hold a particular traveller’s story at a distance. He also rejects the grand claim that familiar spirits determine nearly every human success, office and event, while maintaining that devils can harm bodies and minds by God’s permission. The article’s distinction between a reported claim and Burton’s assertion therefore has to be made locally.

Supernatural action through bodily instruments

The two main senses meet when Burton asks how a devil might cause melancholy. Rogers’s “spirituall body” is said to struggle with our spirits. Biarmannus’s explanation begins with imagination but moves it through humours. The apparent claim that the Devil alone causes the disease is then restricted by non sine interventu humoris, “not without the humour”: altered black choler supplies the immediate bodily cause. Further reports describe a demon exploiting a temperament already inclined to deception, or mingling with melancholy humours. Burton leaves undecided whether the mode is obsession, possession or something else.

These passages do not identify a demon with an animal spirit. They propose that one kind of agent can work upon or through the other kind of medium. The later witchcraft subsection extends this model to human instruments, while the cure separates the question whether a supernatural cure can occur from whether it may lawfully be sought. Knowledge of natural substances can be credited to a demon without making consultation of a magician acceptable.

Love reopens a controversy already encountered in the spirit survey. Burton introduces alleged intercourse with spirits conditionally, gives denials, then contrary witnesses. Later he explicitly subscribes to Lactantius’s account and concludes that the collected testimony makes such intercourse likely, although his examples also allow the alternative of deceitful priests. This is a change in the local argument, not a reason to erase the earlier doubts or to turn the stories into established events.

Sight, attraction and relief

In the chapter on imagination, spirits are proposed as the means through which one person might affect another. Burton’s examples include yawning, sore eyes and alleged bewitchment; the explanation attributed to Weyer, Paracelsus, Cardan and others makes a forceful imagination alter the other person’s spirits. The claim about action beyond one’s own body is stronger than the familiar account of imagination moving one’s own limbs.

The love discussion gives this idea a detailed visual mechanism. Varius says that the purer spirits are infected through exchanged looks. An account attributed to Ficino makes eye-beams carry a vapour generated in the heart, join one lover’s spirits to another’s, and infect the recipient’s blood. Burton notices the objection from those who explain vision by reception into the eye rather than rays sent out of it. The following question about a blind person’s capacity to love is answered by distinguishing natural or chaste love from the particular erotic passion being examined. Thus the proposed transmission is part of a contested account of fascination, not a universal definition of love or an incidental use of “spirit” for a demon.

Cures likewise work on spirits in different ways. Clear air is said to cheer them; music affects both vital and animal spirits, and Scaliger explains its effect through the spirits around the heart responding to vibrating air. An alternative explanation makes the mind itself harmonious. The biblical example of David driving evil spirits from Saul employs the supernatural sense within this same discussion, but does not change the meaning of “vital and animal spirits” in the physiological explanation. Burton also restricts music’s benefit where it feeds an existing amorous disorder.

Causal differences can alter medical prescriptions. Hercules de Saxonia refuses bloodletting in the immaterial melancholy attributed especially to a cold disorder of spirits; Laurentius approves it on other authorities. The contrast shows that “spirits” can identify the disputed target of treatment as well as the means of perception and passion. These are positions within historical medicine, not treatment recommendations.

Human and divine spirit

Burton’s human spirits range from military courage to ordinary disposition and exceptional ability. The orator called “a divine spirit” has a grace of expression that draws others towards him. The charitable people called “divine spirits” embody genuine generosity within a passage otherwise concerned with hypocrisy. The phrase therefore need not be a claim to supernatural revelation. Similarly, melancholy as an evil genius, and disputes as spirits conjured up that nobody can lay, personify an affliction or an intellectual quarrel.

Divine action has its own affirmative place. The account of the will says that in spiritual matters it requires regeneration and the leading of “the Spirit”; the quotation from Psalm 51 asks to be sustained by God’s “free spirit.” Moderate fasting is also praised for fostering true zeal and “a divine spirit.” Burton then approves sobriety, contemplation and ecstasy as a foretaste of happiness and union with God, “a divine melancholy,” before condemning their abuse. This positive sequence prevents the later attack on “private spirits,” sectarian revelations and excessive religious practices from being treated as a rejection of every spiritual gift or contemplative experience.

The comfort against despair brings several senses together with particular precision. The “most divine spirits” are devout people who have nevertheless suffered unwanted thoughts. “The divel he is a spirit” names a supernatural agent said to mingle with our spirits, the bodily media he disturbs alongside heart, brain and humours. The account also admits thoughts proceeding from the sufferers themselves. Its practical distinction concerns consent: the person who rejects and abhors a suggestion has not simply made its content the act of a settled will. Burton even allows for partial assent afterwards repudiated. His advice is not to intensify distress through an anxious struggle with every suggestion. Here the overlapping vocabularies of spirit serve an argument about involuntary suffering and responsibility.

Related entries

Melancholy, for humour, matter, disease and the disputed immaterial kind; Imagination, for movement, images and claims about influence upon another person; Witchcraft, for human instruments and apparent command; Charms and Philters, for the relation between substances, formulas and attributed agency; Jealousy, for fear, suspicion and their bodily explanations.

Related articles and topics: Soul; Animal and vegetal; Humour; Vapours; Daemon and genius; Demonic apparitions; Obsession and possession; Incubus; Fascination; Enthusiasm; Ecstasy; Music; Despair; Hypochondria.

Places to read

1. Reader addressMelancholy as an evil genius, intellectual disputes as unmanageable conjured spirits, and Latin spiritus meaning breath or life under tyranny.
2. 1.1.2.2–4The definition, three bodily kinds, correct organ correspondences, vessels and brain cavities. The whole of Subsection 2. Divisions of the body, humours and spirits · paragraph 36 is essential.
3. The soul and its facultiesSleep, movement, the soul’s instrumental activity, and the distinct theological use of “the Spirit.”
4. Melancholy’s material and immaterial accountsThe spirits-only theory; the spirits of wine in an analogy; different explanations of kinds and symptoms.
5. Divine causation and nature of spiritsDivine instruments, the Psalm’s “free spirit,” created and fallen angels, classical terminology and disputed bodily properties.
6. The spirit digressionReported beings and classifications, apparent transformations, limits of knowledge and action, natural counterexplanations, qualified stories and Burton’s own assertions.
7. Power and bodily causationRejected universal governance, permitted harm, imagination and humour as media, and the undecided mode of possession or obsession.
8. Witches as instrumentsApparent command of spirits and the denial of intrinsic power to ceremonial words and signs.
9. Exercise and imaginationDisrupted animal spirits and the stronger claim that imagination can alter another person’s spirits.
10. Study and frightBodily depletion and martial courage; the spirits’ agitation as a cause distinguished from humoral distemper.
11. Inward causes and symptomsBodily–mental interaction, spirits-only alternatives, internal darkness, optical appearances and imitation spirit voices.
12. Lawfulness of curesAlleged demonic medical skill and the separate prohibition on seeking such help.
13. Air, imagination and musicPhysiological refreshment, the chain from imagination to limbs, musical theories, the different sense in Saul’s evil spirits and the limits of music as remedy.
14. Particular treatmentDisagreement about bloodletting when the supposed disorder is in spirits rather than humoral matter.
15. Eloquence and charity“Divine spirit” as praise of a human speaker or a genuinely charitable person.
16. Love’s extentConditional claims, denials and Burton’s later qualified acceptance of intercourse with spirits.
17. Visual fascinationSpirits, eye-beams, blood and the accounts attributed to Varius and Ficino; objections about vision and blind love; restriction to the erotic passion under examination.
18. False promises of luxury“Spirit of Roses” is a material essence in Burton’s quotation of Volpone’s seductive promise; its speaker and extravagant setting distinguish it from a factual therapeutic claim.
19. Religious experience and claimsPositive divine spirit and contemplation before abuse; “private spirit” as disputed personal authority.
20. Comfort against despairDevout human spirits, the Devil as a spirit, bodily spirits, alternative origins of suggestions, and the distinction between unwanted thoughts and settled consent.
21. Unnumbered Table and closing notice“Spirits in the body what” directs readers to the anatomical discussion; the printed numbers 14 and 15 remain historical index locators.

In this edition

The technical phrase animal spirits remains “animal spirits” in the exercise passage. The modern anatomical paragraph spells out the three kinds and their routes, but this expansion does not remove the need to follow the original paragraph’s explicit organ assignments. At the passage most subtile vapour becomes “extremely fine vapour” and the instrument of the soule becomes “the soul’s instrument.” These equivalents preserve fineness and instrumental agency rather than turning spirit into an autonomous soul.

In the study passage, dulls the spirits becomes “dulls their spirits,” while martiall spirits becomes the singular “martial spirit”. This is a change of idiom that clarifies the courage sense. In the wine analogy, purer spirits becomes “finer spirits”; in the fascination account, the purer spirits remains “the purer spirits”. In Volpone’s promised bath, Spirit of Roses becomes “Essence of roses”. Wine, bodily perception and a fragrant essence supply different local referents.

dæmones becomes “daimones” in the explanation that classical usage includes both good and bad spirits. boni and mali Genii becomes “good and evil guardian spirits”, while malus genius becomes “evil spirit” in Burton’s self-personification. These choices preserve a lexical distinction that indiscriminate translation as “devils” would obscure. They do not certify the separate traditions as one doctrine.

In the final comfort, the most divine spirits becomes “the most godly souls”, but the divel he is a spirit and our spirits retain their respective supernatural and physiological wording in the next paragraph. In Psalm 51, free spirit becomes “generous spirit”. These are local phrase alignments, not evidence that spirit and soul are interchangeable everywhere. The supplied text and apparatus have been consulted; the historical works cited by Burton have not each been independently collated for this article.

agitatio spirituum

Printed “ab agitatione spirituum” (Latin).

Printed form, Original wording: ab agitatione spirituum

From the agitation of spirits, a proposed cause distinguished from humoral distemper

Source: original body

Source wording: Hercules de Saxonia, calls this kinde of Melancholy (ab agitatione spirituum) by a peculiar name; it comes from the agitation, motion, contraction, dilatation of spirits, not from any distemperature of humors, and produceth strong effects. This terror is most usually caused, as Plutarch will have, from some imminent danger, when a terrible object is at hand, heard, seen, or conceived, truely appearing, or in a dream: and many times the more sudden the accident, it is the more violent.

Modern rendering: from the agitation of the spirits

Layer: paired modern body

animal spirits · Animal spirits → Animal spirits

Printed “Animal spirits” (English).

Spirits formed from vital spirits, carried through brain and nerves for sense and movement

Source: original body

Source wording: Of these spirits there be three kinds, according to the three principall parts, Brain, Heart, Liver; Natural, Vital, Animal. The Natural are begotten in the Liver, and thence dispersed through the Veins, to perform those natural actions. The Vital Spirits are made in the Heart of the Natural, which by the Arteries are transported to all the other parts: if these Spirits cease, then life ceaseth, as in a Syncope or Swouning. The Animal spirits formed of the Vital, brought up to the Brain, and diffused by the Nerves, to the subordinate Members, give sense and motion to them all.

animal spirits · animal spirits → animal spirits

Printed “animal spirits” (English).

Bodily agents disrupted by putrefied undigested material in the exercise account

Source: original body

Source wording: So doth it, if it be unseasonably used, upon a full stomack, or when the body is full of crudities, which Fuchsius so much enveighs against, Lib. 2. instit. sect. 2. c. 4. giving that for a cause, why school-boys in Germany are so often scabbed, because they use exercise presently after meats. Bayerus puts in a caveat against such exercise, because it corrupts the meat in the stomack, and carries the same juyce raw, and as yet undigested, into the veins (saith Lemnius) which there putrifies, and confounds the animal spirits.

bodily spirits

Printed “Spirits in the body what” (English).

Index heading for the nature of bodily spirits

Source: original body

Source wording: Spirits in the body what 14,15

conjure spirits

Printed “spirits conjured up” (English).

Intellectual controversies personified as spirits difficult to quiet

Source: original body

Source wording: and that with such eagernesse, impudence, abominable lying, falsifying, and bitternesse in their questions they proceed, that as he said, furorne cæcus, an rapit vis acrior, an culpa, responsum date? Blinde fury, or error, or rashnesse, or what it is that eggs them, I know not, I am sure many times, which Austin perceived long since, tempestate contentionis, serenitas charitatis obnubilatur, with this tempest of contention, the serenity of charity is over-clouded, and there be too many spirits conjured up already in this kinde in all sciences, and more than we can tel how to lay, which do so furiously rage, and keep such a racket,

Original wording: spirits conjured up already in this kinde

Modern rendering: spirits of this kind have already been conjured up

Layer: paired modern body

Qualification: The wider phrase supplies already and of this kind in the reordered modern clause.

daemon / daimon

Printed “dæmones” (Greek word in Latinized form).

Printed form, Original wording: dæmones

Classical name encompassing both good and bad spirits in Burton’s account

Source: original body

Source wording: substantiæ separatæ and intelligences, are the same which Christians call Angels, and Platonists Devils, for they name all the Spirits, dæmones, be they good or bad Angels, as Iulius Pollux Onomasticon, lib. 1. cap. 1. observes. Epicures and Atheists are of the same minde in generall, because they never saw them.

Modern rendering: daimones

Layer: paired modern body

darkened spirits

Printed “spirits obscured” (English).

Spirits darkened by black humoral matter in the defended physiological account of fear

Source: original body

Source wording: Averroes scoffs at Galen for his reasons, and brings five arguments to refell them: so doth Herc. de Saxoniâ, Tract. de melanch. cap. 3. assigning other causes, which are copiously censured and confuted by Ælianus Montaltus, cap. 5. & 6. Lod. Mercatus de Inter. morb. cur. lib. 1. cap. 17. Altomarus cap. 7. de mel. Guianerius tract. 15. c. 1. Bright cap. 17. Laurentius cap. 5. Valesius med. cont. lib. 5. con. 1. Distemperature they conclude, makes black juice, blackness obscures the spirits, the spirits obscured, cause fear and sorrow.

divine spirit: devotion

Printed “divine spirit” (English).

Approved spiritual disposition fostered by moderate fasting

Source: original body

Source wording: Not that fasting is a thing of it self to be discommended, for it is an excellent means to keep the body in subjection, a preparative to devotion, the physick of the soul, by which chast thoughts are ingendred, true zeal, a divine spirit, whence wholesome counsels do proceed, concupiscence is restrained, vicious and predominant lusts and humours are expelled. The Fathers are very much in commendation of it, and as Calvin notes, sometimes immoderate.

divine spirit: devout person

Printed “the most divine spirits” (English).

Devout human beings who can nevertheless experience unwanted thoughts

Source: original body

Source wording: These are abominable, unspeakable offences, and most opposite to God, tentationes fœdæ & impiæ; yet in this case, he or they that shall be tempted and so affected, must know, that no man living is free from such thoughts in part, or at some times the most divine spirits have been so tempted in some sort, evil custom, omission of holy exercises, ill company, idleness, solitariness, melancholy, or depraved nature, and the divel is still ready to corrupt, trouble, and divert our souls, to suggest such blasphemous thoughts into our phantasies, ungodly, profane, monstrous and wicked conceits:

divine spirit: human excellence · divine spirit → divine spirit

Printed “divine spirit” (English).

An eloquent human being praised for attractive speech

Source: original body

Source wording: Christ was gratious with God and men, Luk. 2. 52. There is still some peculiar grace, as of good discourse, eloquence, wit, honesty, which is the primum mobile, first mover, and a most forcible loadstone to draw the favours and good wills of mens eyes, ears, and affections unto them. When Jesus spake they were all astonied at his answers, (Luk. 2. 47.) and wondred at his gratious words which proceeded from his mouth. An Orator steals away the hearts of men, and as another Orpheus, quo vult, unde vult, he puls them to him by speech alone: a sweet voice causeth admiration; and he that can utter himself in good words, in our ordinary phrase, is called a proper man, a divine spirit.

divine spirit: human excellence · divine spirits → divine spirits

Printed “divine spirits” (English).

Genuinely charitable human beings, expressly exempted from a general criticism of hypocrisy

Source: original body

Source wording: I will not urge this to derogate from any mans charitable devotion, or bounty in this kinde, to censure any good work; no doubt there be many sanctified, heroical, and worthy minded men, that in true zeal, and for vertues sake (divine spirits) that out of commiseration and pitty, extend their liberality, and as much as in them lies, do good to all men, cloath the naked, feed the hungry, comfort the sick and needy, relieve all, forget and forgive injuries, as true charity requires; yet most part there is simulatum quid, a deal of hypocrisie in this kind, much default and defect.

evil spirits

Printed “evill spirits” (English).

Supernatural evil spirits in the biblical account of Saul and David’s music

Source: original body

Source wording: Who hath not heard how Davids harmony drove away the evill spirits from king Saul, 1. Sam. 16. and Elisha when he was much troubled by importunate kings, called for a Minstrel, and when he played, the hand of the Lord came upon him, 2. King 3.

free spirit

Printed “free spirit” (English).

Divine sustaining or generous spirit in a quoted Psalm

Source: original body

Source wording: And pray with David, acknowledging his power, I am weakned and sore broken, I roar for the grief of mine heart, mine heart panteth, &c. Psal. 38.8. O Lord rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chastise me in thy wrath, Ps. 38.1. Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken, may rejoyce, Psal. 51.8. & verse 12. Restore to me the joy of thy salvation, and stablish me with thy free spirit.

genius · malus genius → evil spirit

Printed “malus genius” (Latin).

Printed form, Original wording: malus genius

Melancholy personified as a harmful or evil attendant spirit

Source: original body

Source wording: Besides I might not well refrain, for ubi dolor, ibi digitus, one must needs scratch where it itches. I was not a little offended with this maladie, shall I say my Mistris melancholy, my Ægeria, or my malus genius, & for that cause as he that is stung with a scorpion, I would expel clavum clavo, comfort one sorrow with another, idlenes with idlenes, ut ex viperâ Theriacum, make an Antidote out of that which was the prime cause of my disease.

Modern rendering: evil spirit

Layer: paired modern body

genius / genii

Printed “boni and mali Genii” (Latin phrase with English conjunction).

Printed form, Original wording: boni and mali Genii

Good and bad guardians appointed to protect or punish people

Source: original body

Source wording: They are (as others suppose) appointed by those higher Powers to keep men from their nativity, and to protect, or punish them as they see cause: and are called boni and mali Genii by the Romans. Heroes, Lares, if good, Lemures or Larvæ if bad, by the Stoicks, governours of Countries, Men, Cities, saith Apuleius,

Modern rendering: good and evil guardian spirits

Layer: paired modern body

heros / heroes

Printed “Heroes” (Latinized Greek).

Printed form, Original wording, Modern rendering: Heroes

A name of good guardian spirits in the terminology assigned to the Stoics

Source: original body

Source wording: They are (as others suppose) appointed by those higher Powers to keep men from their nativity, and to protect, or punish them as they see cause: and are called boni and mali Genii by the Romans. Heroes, Lares, if good, Lemures or Larvæ if bad, by the Stoicks, governours of Countries, Men, Cities, saith Apuleius,

Layer: paired modern body

immaterial melancholy · immateriall → Immaterial melancholy

Printed “immateriall” (English).

Printed form, Original wording: immateriall

A disorder in spirits alone in the reported competing account

Source: original body

Source wording: The immateriall or adventitious, acquisite, redundant, unnatural, artificial: which Hercules de Saxonia will have reside in the spirits alone, and to proceed from an hot, cold, dry, moist distemperature, which without matter, alter the Brain and functions of it. Paracelsus wholly rejects and derides this division of four humors and complexions, but our Galenists generally approve of it, subscribing to this opinion of Montanus.

Modern rendering: Immaterial melancholy

Layer: paired modern body

Qualification: The original substantivized adjective has an understood noun; the modern rendering makes melancholy explicit.

Supplied words: melancholy

instrument

Printed “the instrument of the soule” (English).

Spirits as instruments through which the soul performs actions

Source: original body

Source wording: Spirit is a most subtile vapour, which is expressed from the Bloud, & the instrument of the soule, to perform all his actions; a common tye or medium betwixt the body and the soul, as some will have it; or as Paracelsus, a fourth soul of it self. Melancthon holds the fountain of these spirits to be the Heart, begotten there; and afterward convayed to the Brain, they take another nature to them.

lar / lares

Printed “Lares” (Latin).

Printed form, Original wording, Modern rendering: Lares

Good guardian spirits in the naming scheme Burton reports

Source: original body

Source wording: They are (as others suppose) appointed by those higher Powers to keep men from their nativity, and to protect, or punish them as they see cause: and are called boni and mali Genii by the Romans. Heroes, Lares, if good, Lemures or Larvæ if bad, by the Stoicks, governours of Countries, Men, Cities, saith Apuleius,

Layer: paired modern body

larva / larvae

Printed “Larvæ” (Latin).

Printed form, Original wording: Larvæ

Bad spirits in the naming scheme Burton reports

Source: original body

Source wording: They are (as others suppose) appointed by those higher Powers to keep men from their nativity, and to protect, or punish them as they see cause: and are called boni and mali Genii by the Romans. Heroes, Lares, if good, Lemures or Larvæ if bad, by the Stoicks, governours of Countries, Men, Cities, saith Apuleius,

Modern rendering: Larvae

Layer: paired modern body

lemures

Printed “Lemures” (Latin).

Printed form, Original wording, Modern rendering: Lemures

Bad spirits in the naming scheme Burton reports

Source: original body

Source wording: They are (as others suppose) appointed by those higher Powers to keep men from their nativity, and to protect, or punish them as they see cause: and are called boni and mali Genii by the Romans. Heroes, Lares, if good, Lemures or Larvæ if bad, by the Stoicks, governours of Countries, Men, Cities, saith Apuleius,

Layer: paired modern body

martial spirit

Printed “martiall spirits” (English).

Military courage and vigour

Source: original body

Source wording: Varro belike for that cause calls Tristes Philosophos & severos, severe, sad, dry, tetrick are common Epithites to Scholars: And Patritius therefore in the institution of Princes, would not have them to be great Students. For (as Machiavel holds) Study weakens their bodies, dulls the spirits, abates their strength and courage; and good Scholars are never good Souldiers, which a certain Goth well perceived, for when his Country-men came into Greece, and would have burned all their books, he cried out against it, by all means they should do it, leave them that plague, which in time will consume all their vigor, and martiall spirits.

natural spirits

Printed “The Natural” (English).

Printed form, Original wording: The Natural

Elliptical name of natural spirits, generated in liver and distributed through veins

Source: original body

Source wording: Of these spirits there be three kinds, according to the three principall parts, Brain, Heart, Liver; Natural, Vital, Animal. The Natural are begotten in the Liver, and thence dispersed through the Veins, to perform those natural actions. The Vital Spirits are made in the Heart of the Natural, which by the Arteries are transported to all the other parts: if these Spirits cease, then life ceaseth, as in a Syncope or Swouning. The Animal spirits formed of the Vital, brought up to the Brain, and diffused by the Nerves, to the subordinate Members, give sense and motion to them all.

Modern rendering: Natural spirits

Layer: paired modern body

Qualification: Natural is elliptical in the original; the modern rendering supplies spirits from the governing classification.

Supplied words: spirits

non sine interventu humoris

Printed “non sine interventu humoris” (Latin).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording: non sine interventu humoris

Not without the intervention of humour; restriction of supposed demonic causation

Source: original body

Source wording: but non sine interventu humoris, not without the humor, as he interprets himself; no more doth Avicenna, si contingat à dæmonio, sufficit nobis ut convertat complexionem ad choleram nigram, & sit causa ejus propinqua cholera nigra; the immediate cause is choler adust, which Pomponatius likewise labors to make good:

Modern rendering: not without the intervention of a humour

Layer: paired modern body

private spirit

Printed “private spirit” (English).

Claimed personal inspiration treated as authoritative over public or religious institutions

Source: original body

Source wording: Some of them again have such strong faith, so presumptuous, they will go into infected houses, expel divels, and fast forty daies, as Christ himself did; some call God and his attributes into question, as Vorstius and Socinus; some Princes, civil Magistrates, and their authorities, as Anabaptists, will do all their own private spirit dictates, and nothing else.

Spirit: divine

Printed “Spirit” (English).

Divine leading in regeneration, distinguished from natural bodily media

Source: original body

Source wording: But in Spiritual things we will no good, prone to evil (except we be regenerate, and led by the Spirit) we are egged on by our natural concupiscence, and there is ἀταξία, a confusion in our powers; our whole will is averse from God and his law, not in natural things only, as to eat and drink, lust, to which we are led headlong by our temperature and inordinate appetite,

spirit: essence

Printed “Spirit of Roses” (English).

Material fragrant essence of roses in a fictional seducer’s extravagant promise

Source: original body

Source wording: The heads of Parrats, tongues of Nightingals. The brains of Peacocks, and of Estriches, Their bath shall be the juyce of Gilliflowres, Spirit of Roses, and of Violets, The milk of Unicorns, &c.

spirit: physiological

Printed “Spirit” (English).

Subtle vapour expressed from blood, functioning as the soul’s instrument

Source: original body

Source wording: Spirit is a most subtile vapour, which is expressed from the Bloud, & the instrument of the soule, to perform all his actions; a common tye or medium betwixt the body and the soul, as some will have it; or as Paracelsus, a fourth soul of it self. Melancthon holds the fountain of these spirits to be the Heart, begotten there; and afterward convayed to the Brain, they take another nature to them.

spirit: supernatural · Spirits and Devils → spirits and devils

Printed “Spirits and Devils” (English).

Supernatural agents whose power to cause disease is under examination

Source: original body

Source wording: How far the power of Spirits and Devils doth extend, and whether they can cause this, or any other Disease, is a serious question, and worthy to be considered: for the better understanding of which, I will make a brief digression of the nature of Spirits.

spirit: supernatural · the divel he is a spirit → the devil is a spirit

Printed “the divel he is a spirit” (English).

The Devil as supernatural agent in a conditional account of disturbing suggestions

Source: original body

Source wording: If they come from Satan, they are more speedy, fearfull and violent, the parties cannot avoid them: they are more frequent, I say, and monstrous when they come; for the divel he is a spirit, and hath means and opportunitie to mingle himself with our spirits, and sometimes more slily, sometimes more abruptly and openly, to suggest such divelish thoughts into our hearts; he insults and domineers in melancholy distempered phantasies and persons especially:

spirits and humours

Printed “spirits and humors” (English).

Bodily media whose disorder disturbs the soul

Source: original body

Source wording: that I must needs conclude with Lemnius, spiritus & humores maximum nocumentum obtinent, spirits and humors do most harme in troubling the soul. How should a man choose but be cholerick and angry, that hath his body so clogged with abundance of gross humors? or melancholy, that is so inwardly disposed? That thence comes then this malady, Madness, Apoplexies, Lethargies, &c. it may not be denied.

spirits: influence between persons

Printed “spirits of the other” (English).

The other person’s bodily spirits allegedly altered by a forceful imagination

Source: original body

Source wording: Why doth a Carkass bleed, when the murtherer is brought before it, some weeks after the murther hath been done? Why do Witches and old women, fascinate and bewitch children: but as Wierus, Paracelsus, Cardan, Mizaldus, Valleriola, Cæsar Vanninus, Campanella, and many Philosophers think, the forcible imagination of the one party, moves and alters the spirits of the other.

spirits: instrumental movement

Printed “Imagination enforceth spirits” (English).

Imagination drives bodily spirits, which act through nerves upon limbs

Source: original body

Source wording: Imagination enforceth spirits which by an admirable league of nature compel the nerves to obey, and they our several limbs: we give too much way to our passions. And as to him that is sick of an ague, all things are distastful and unpleasant, non ex cibi vitio, saith Plutarch, not in the meat, but in our taste: so many things are offensive to us, not of themselves, but out of our corrupt judgement, jealousie, suspicion and the like; we pull these mischiefs upon our own heads.

spirits: physiological

Printed “our spirits” (English).

Human bodily spirits with which the Devil is said to mingle

Source: original body

Source wording: If they come from Satan, they are more speedy, fearfull and violent, the parties cannot avoid them: they are more frequent, I say, and monstrous when they come; for the divel he is a spirit, and hath means and opportunitie to mingle himself with our spirits, and sometimes more slily, sometimes more abruptly and openly, to suggest such divelish thoughts into our hearts; he insults and domineers in melancholy distempered phantasies and persons especially:

spirits: vigour

Printed “dulls the spirits” (English).

Diminishes bodily and mental vigour in an anti-study argument

Source: original body

Source wording: Varro belike for that cause calls Tristes Philosophos & severos, severe, sad, dry, tetrick are common Epithites to Scholars: And Patritius therefore in the institution of Princes, would not have them to be great Students. For (as Machiavel holds) Study weakens their bodies, dulls the spirits, abates their strength and courage; and good Scholars are never good Souldiers, which a certain Goth well perceived, for when his Country-men came into Greece, and would have burned all their books, he cried out against it, by all means they should do it, leave them that plague, which in time will consume all their vigor, and martiall spirits.

spirits: visual fascination

Printed “the purer spirits” (English).

Bodily spirits allegedly infected by exchanged looks

Source: original body

Source wording: Leonard. Varius lib. 1. cap. 2. de fascinat. telleth us, that by this interview, the purer spirits are infected, the one Eye pierceth through the other with his rays, which he sends forth, and many men have those excellent piercing eys, that which Suetonius relates of Augustus, their brightness is such, they compel their spectators to look off, and can no more endure them then the Sun beams.

spirits: wine

Printed “purer spirits” (English).

Finer volatile constituents of wine, in a material analogy

Source: original body

Source wording: And indeed as Rodericus à Fons. cons. 12. l. determines, ichores & those serous matters being thickned become flegme, and flegme degenerates into choler, choler adust becomes æruginosa melancholia, as vinegar out of pure wine putrified or by exhalation of purer spirits is so made and becomes sowre and sharp: and from the sharpness of this humor proceed much waking, troublesome thoughts & dreams, &c.

spiritual body

Printed “spirituall body” (English).

Rogers’s expression for the Devil as an agent struggling with human bodily spirits

Source: original body

Source wording: For being a spirituall body, he struggles with our spirits, saith Rogers, and suggests (according to Cardan, verba sine voce, species sine visu, envie, lust, anger, &c.) as he sees men inclined.

spiritual vapour

Printed “spiritual vapours” (English).

Vapours of bodily spirits said to travel with eye-rays

Source: original body

Source wording: The rays, as some think, sent from the eys, carry certain spiritual vapours with them, and so infect the other party, and that in a moment. I know, they that hold visio fit intramittendo, will make a doubt of this; but Ficinus proves it from blear-eys, That by sight alone, make others blear eyed: and it is more then manifest, that the vapour of the corrupt blood doth get in together with the rays, and so by the contagion, the spectators eys are infected.

spiritus

Printed “spiritus” (Latin).

Breath or life itself under a tyrant’s power

Source: original body

Source wording: not only fire and water, goods or lands, sed ipse spiritus ab insolentissimi victoris pendet nutu, such is their slavery, their lives and souls depend upon his insolent will and command. A tyrant that spoyls all wheresoever he comes, insomuch that an Historian complains, if an old inhabitant should now see them, he would not know them, if a traveller, or stranger, it would grieve his heart to behold them.

Original wording: ipse spiritus

Modern rendering: life itself

Layer: paired modern body

Qualification: Ipse supplies itself; spiritus alone supplies life in this context.

subtle / vapour

Printed “most subtile vapour” (English).

Extremely fine vapour, the defining bodily character of spirit here

Source: original body

Source wording: Spirit is a most subtile vapour, which is expressed from the Bloud, & the instrument of the soule, to perform all his actions; a common tye or medium betwixt the body and the soul, as some will have it; or as Paracelsus, a fourth soul of it self. Melancthon holds the fountain of these spirits to be the Heart, begotten there; and afterward convayed to the Brain, they take another nature to them.

vital and animal spirits

Printed “vital and animal spirits” (English).

Bodily spirits affected by music in the physiological account

Source: original body

Source wording: affecting not onely the ears, but the very arteries, the vital and animal spirits, it erects the minde, and makes it nimble. Lemnius instit. cap. 44.

vital spirits

Printed “Vital Spirits” (English).

Spirits made in the heart from natural spirits and carried through arteries to sustain life

Source: original body

Source wording: Of these spirits there be three kinds, according to the three principall parts, Brain, Heart, Liver; Natural, Vital, Animal. The Natural are begotten in the Liver, and thence dispersed through the Veins, to perform those natural actions. The Vital Spirits are made in the Heart of the Natural, which by the Arteries are transported to all the other parts: if these Spirits cease, then life ceaseth, as in a Syncope or Swouning. The Animal spirits formed of the Vital, brought up to the Brain, and diffused by the Nerves, to the subordinate Members, give sense and motion to them all.