they return to the scenes of their terrestrial life.1 Now, it may be asked what the effect of the Final Destruction of the World by Fire at the Last Day will be on the human souls which then have still only terrestrial bodies, and on the human souls and souls of Daemons (or Angels) which have still only aerial bodies. These bodies, unless saved by a miracle, will be burnt up, and their souls, having no vehicles, will cease to live the life of active consciousness.2 (Therefore, More argues, using Stoical terms, an ἀποκατάστασις and παλιγγενεσία after the ἀνάστασις and ἐκπύρωσις would not meet their case ; for a soul whose body had been burnt would have ceased to be conscious, and maliyyeveola would only bring it back to consciousness a different being. It will require supernatural means to rescue the souls of good men and Daemons (or Angels) at the time of the Final Conflagration, or even

1 Cf. More's Philosophical Poems, p. 260 (ed. 1647) :—

In shape they walk much like to what they bore
Upon the Earth: for that light Orb of Air
Which they inact must yielden evermore
To Phansie's beck, so when the Souls appear
To their own selves alive as once they were,
So cloath'd and conversant in such a place,
The inward eyes of Phansie thither stear
Their gliding vehicle, that bears the face

Of him that liv'd, that men may reade what Wight it was.

Similarly Dante (Purg. xxv. 91–99) explains the aerial bodies of the souls in Purgatory:

:

E come l' aer, quand' è ben piorno,

Per l' altrui raggio che in sè si riflette,

Di diversi color diventa adorno,

Così l'aer vicin quivi si mette

In quella forma che in lui suggella
Virtualmente l' alma che ristette :
E simigliante poi alla fiammella
Che segue il foco là 'vunque si muta,
Segue allo spirto sua forma novella.

See also More's Immortality of the Soul, iii. 1, § 8, p. 149, where it is stated that the Soul, although she has a marvellous power, by the imperium of her will, of changing the temper and shape of her aerial vehicle, and of solidifying it so that it reflects light and becomes visible, she has a much greater power over her aethereal vehicle. The aethereally embodied soul can temper the solidity of her vehicle (see Immortality of the Soul, p. 233), so as to ascend or descend, and pass from one "vortex to another. More looks forward (Defence of the Moral Cabbala, ch. ii. p. 165) to the Millennium as the time when, instead of occasional communications between souls terrestrially and aethereally embodied, there will be close and constant intercourse.

"The very nature of the Soul, as it is a Soul, is an aptitude of informing or actuating Body."-More's Defence of the Moral Cabbala, ch. ii. p. 167, ed. 1662.

3 More, Immortality of the Soul, iii. 18.

H

before that time, when the extinction of the sun-presaged by his spots recently discovered by one Shiner 1-takes place. Neither terrestrial nor aerial bodies could, without the intervention of a miracle, survive such heat or such cold. But it is only in this lower part of the universe that such destructive agencies can operate. The aethereal region will not be affected by them; and souls which have reached the stage of aethereal or celestial embodiment will remain unharmed.

So much for the "science" which serves to give plausibility to the following Myth, as we may well call it :

The greatest difficulty is to give a rational account whence the Bad Genii have their food, in their execrable Feasts, so formally made up into dishes. That the materials of it is a vaporous Aire, appears as well from the faintness and emptiness of them that have been entertained at those Feasts, as from their forbidding the use of Salt at them, it having a virtue of dissolving of all aqueous substances, as well as hindering their congelation. But how Aire is moulded up into that form and consistency, it is very hard to conceive whether it be done by the mere power of Imagination upon their own Vehicles, first dabled in some humidities that are the fittest for their design, which they change into these forms of Viands, and then withdraw, when they have given them such a figure, colour, and consistency, with some small touch of such a sapour or tincture; or whether it be the priviledge of these Aereal Creatures, by a sharp Desire and keen Imagination, to pierce the Spirit of Nature, so as to awaken her activity, and engage her to the compleating in a moment, as it were, the full design of their own wishes, but in such matter as the Element they are in is capable of, which is this crude and vaporous Aire; whence their food must be very dilute and flashie, and rather a mockery than any solid satisfaction and pleasure.

But those Superiour Daemons, which inhabit that part of the Aire that no storm nor tempest can reach, need be put to no such shifts, though they may be as able in them as the other. For in the tranquillity of those upper Regions, that Promus-Condus of the Universe, the Spirit of Nature, may silently send forth whole Gardens and Orchards of most delectable fruits and flowers of an equilibrious ponderosity to the parts of the Aire they grow in, to whose shape and colours the transparency of these Plants may adde a particular lustre, as we see it is in precious stones. And the Chymists are never quiet till the heat of their Fancy have calcined and vitrified the Earth into a crystalline pellucidity, conceiting that it will then be a very fine thing indeed, and all that then

1 More, Immortality of the Soul, iii. 19.

grows out of it: which desirable spectacle they may haply enjoy in a more perfect manner whenever they are admitted into those higher Regions of the Aire. For the very Soile then under them shall be transparent, in which they may trace the very Roots of the Trees of this Superiour Paradise with their eyes, and if it may not offend them, see this opake Earth through it, bounding their sight with such a white faint splendour as is discovered in the Moon, with that difference of brightness that will arise from the distinction of Land and Water; and if they will recreate their palats, may taste of such Fruits as whose natural juice will vie with their noblest Extractions and Quintessences. For such certainly will they there find the blood of the Grape, the rubiecoloured Cherries, and Nectarines.

And if, for the compleating of the pleasantness of these habitations, that they may look less like a silent and dead solitude, they meet with Birds and Beasts of curious shapes and colours, the single accents of whose voices are very grateful to the Ear, and the varying of their notes perfect musical harmony; they would doe very kindly to bring us word back of the certainty of these things, and make this more than a Philosophical Conjecture.

But that there may be Food and Feasting in those higher Aereal Regions, is less doubted by the Platonists; which makes Maximus Tyrius call the Soul, when she has left the body, Opéμμa ailépiov; and the above-cited Oracle of Apollo describes the Felicity of that Chorus of immortal Lovers he mentions there, from feasting together with the blessed Genii—

ὅσοις κέαρ ἐν θαλίῃσιν

αἰὲν ἐϋφροσύνῃσιν ἰαίνεται.

So that the Nectar and Ambrosia of the Poets may not be a mere fable. For the Spirit of Nature, which is the immediate Instrument of God, may enrich the fruits of these Aereal Paradises with such liquors, as being received into the bodies of these purer Daemons, and diffusing it self through their Vehicles, may cause such grateful motions analogical to our tast, and excite such a more than ordinary quickness in their minds, and benign chearfulness, that it may far transcend the most delicate Refection that the greatest Epicures could ever invent upon Earth; and that without all satiety, burdensomeness, it filling them with nothing but Divine Love, Joy, and Devotion.1

It is very difficult to disentangle the motives which go to the production of a passage like this. We should say

1 More's Immortality of the Soul, iii. 9, pp. 183, 184, ed. 1662. The indebtedness of More's "Myth" to the Platonic, and Stoic mythology of τὰ περὶ γῆν inhabited by δαίμονες and human souls, is obvious. For further reference to that mythology see infra, pp. 437 ff.

without hesitation that the writer wished to adorn his discourse with a myth, if we did not know how uncritical his "science" was, and how credulous he was in accepting, as literally true, things quite as visionary as those here described. In his Antidote against Atheism he shows how thoroughly he believes current stories about the doings of witches and ghosts (see especially Book iii. chap. vii. of that work, for the story of Anne Bodenham, a witch, who suffered at Salisbury in 1653), and how valuable he holds these stories to be as evidence for the immortality of the Soul; indeed, in the Preface to his Philosophickal Poems he goes the length of expressing the wish that stories of witchcraft and apparitions "were publicly recorded in every parish," for "that course continued would prove one of the best antidotes against that earthly and cold disease of Sadducisme and Atheisme which may easily grow upon us, if not prevented, to the hazard of all Religion and the best kinds of Philosophy." It is to be noted, however, that Cudworth and Smith are not so credulous as More. Cudworth may be said to be a cautious believer in apparitions, and dwells on the Scripture evidence for demoniacal possession, and not, like More, on that afforded by modern stories;1 while Smith, in a sermon preached on an occasion when credulity seemed to be required, expresses himself in a manner which makes one feel that he was in advance of

his age.

There is just one general remark I should like to make in taking leave of More for the present:-That facility of scientific explanation is apt to make men indifferent about the substantiation of the facts, as facts. The facility of scientific explanation afforded by the hypothesis of "plastick power doubtless made it more easy for More and other Cambridge Platonists to accept as sufficient the evidence forthcoming for the actual appearance of ghosts and Daemons. Facility of scientific explanation is a danger which we have to be on our guard against at the present day too.

The true object of the Phaedo Myth is, indeed, moral and

1 Intellectual System, vol. ii. p. 640 (ed. Mosheim).

2 Discourse 10, Of a Christian's Conflicts with and Conquests over Satan, "delivered in publick at Huntingdon, where one of Queen's College, in every year on March 25, preached a Sermon against Witchcraft, Diabolical Contracts, etc."; see Worthington's Preface to Smith's Select Discourses.

religious, not in any way scientific-its true object is to give expression to man's sense of responsibility, which it does in the form of a vivid history, or spectacle, of the connected lifestages of an immortal personality. This moral and religious object, however, is served best, if the history or spectacle, though carefully presented as a creation of fancy, is not made too fantastical, but is kept at least consistent with "modern science." 1 It is of the greatest importance that the student of the philosophy of Plato's Myths should learn to appreciate the terms of this alliance between Myth and Science; 2 and I do not know how the lesson can be better learnt than from parallel study of Dante's Divina Commedia, in which all the science-moral and physical-of the age is used to give verisimilitude to the great μlos of medieval Christianity. Fortunately, no better instances of the art with which Dante presses Science into the service of Myth could be found than in his treatment of a subject which has special interest for us here, in connection with the geography and geology of the Phaedo Myth. This brings me to the second head of observations which I have to offer on the Phaedo Myth.

II

In this section I wish to draw attention to the parallel between Plato's geography of Tartarus and the True Surface of the Earth, and Dante's geography of Hell and the Mount of Purgatory with the Earthly Paradise on its summit.

The parallel is close. On the one hand, the Phaedo Myth and the Divina Commedia stand entirely alone, so far as I know, among Eschatological Myths in making Tartarus or Hell a chasm bored right through the globe of the Earth (διαμπερές τετρημένον δι ̓ ὅλης τῆς γῆς, Phaedo, 111 E; Inferno, xxxiv. sub fin.), with two antipodally placed openings. On the other hand, while the Phaedo Myth stands alone among Plato's Eschatological Myths in describing a lofty terrestrial region raised, above the elements of water and air, up into the 1 Aristotle's canon applies-προαιρεῖσθαί τε δεῖ ἀδύνατα εἰκότα μᾶλλον ἢ durarà àílava.-Poet. 1460 a 30.

2 In this connection the reader should turn to Prof. Dill's illuminating remarks on the mixture of science with devotional allegory and myth in the Commentary of Macrobius on Cicero's Dream of Scipio: Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, Book i. ch. iv. pp. 88-90, ed. 1.