467. ~soul grows clotted~. This doctrine is expounded in Plato's _Phaedo_,
in a conversation between Socrates and Cebes:
_Socrates_ (speaking of the pure soul). That soul, I say, herself
invisible, departs to the invisible world--to the divine and
immortal and rational: thither arriving, she is secure of bliss,
and is released from the error and folly of men, their fears and
wild passions and all other human ills, and for ever dwells, as
they say of the initiated, in company with the gods. Is not this
true, Cebes?
_Cebes._ Yes; beyond a doubt.
_Soc._ But the soul which has been polluted, and is impure at the
time of her departure, and is the companion and servant of the body
always, and is in love with and fascinated by the body and by the
desires and pleasures of the body, until she is led to believe that
the truth only exists in a bodily form, which a man may touch and
see and taste, and use for the purposes of his lusts--the soul, I
mean, accustomed to hate and fear and avoid the intellectual
principle, which to the bodily eye is dark and invisible and can be
attained only by philosophy;--do you suppose that such a soul will
depart pure and unalloyed?
_Ceb._ That is impossible.
_Soc._ She is held fast by the corporeal, which the continual
association and constant care of the body have wrought into her
nature.
_Ceb._ Very true.
_Soc._ And this corporeal element, my friend, is heavy and weighty
and earthy, and is that element by which such a soul is depressed
and dragged down again into the visible world, because she is
afraid of the invisible and of the world below--prowling about
tombs and sepulchres, in the neighbourhood of which, as they tell
us, are seen certain ghostly apparitions of souls which have not
departed pure, but are cloyed with sight and therefore visible.
_Ceb._ That is very likely, Socrates.
_Soc._ Yes, that is very likely, Cebes; and these must be the
souls, not of the good, but of the evil, who are compelled to
wander about such places in payment of the penalty of their former
evil way of life; and they continue to wander until through the
craving after the corporeal which never leaves them, they are
imprisoned finally in another body. And they may be supposed to
find their prisons in the same natures which they have had in their
former lives.
Further on in the same dialogue, Socrates says:
Each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which nails and rivets the
soul to the body, until she becomes like the body, and believes
that to be true which the body affirms to be true; and from
agreeing with the body, and having the same delights, she is
obliged to have the same habits and haunts, and is not likely ever
to be pure at her departure, but is always infected by the
body.--_Extracted from Jowett's Translation of the Dialogues._
468. ~imbodies and imbrutes~, _i.e._ becomes materialised and brutish.
_Imbody_, ordinarily used as a transitive verb, is here intransitive.
_Imbrute_ (said to have been coined by Milton) is also intransitive; in
_Par. Lost_, ix. 166, it is transitive. The use of the word may have
been suggested by the _Phaedo_, where the souls of the wicked are said
to "find their prisons in the same natures which they have had in their
former lives," those of gluttons and drunkards passing into asses and
animals of that sort.
469. ~divine property~. In his prose works Milton calls the soul 'that
divine particle of God's breathing': comp. Horace, _Sat._ ii. 2. 79,
"affigit humo _divinae particulam aurae_"; and Plato's _Phaedo_, "The
soul resembles the divine, and the body the mortal."