It would not be necessary to premise, but for the frequency with which the phrase occurs, that the “spiritual body” is a contradiction in terms. The office of body is to relate spirit to an objective world. By platonic writers it is usually termed okhema — "vehicle". It is the medium of [Page 16] action and also of sensibility. In this philosophy the conception of soul was not simply, as with us, the immaterial subject of consciousness. How warily the interpreter has to tread here, every one knows who has dipped even superficially into the controversies among the Platonists themselves. All admit the distinction between the rational and the irrational part or principle, the latter including, first, the sensibility, and, secondly, the plastic, or that power which in obedience to its sympathies enables the soul to attach itself to, and to organize into a suitable body, those substances of the universe to which it is most congruous. It is more difficult to determine whether Plato or his principal followers recognized in the rational soul or nous a distinct and separable entity — that which is sometimes discriminated as “the Spirit”. Dr. Henry More, no mean authority, repudiates this interpretation. "There can be nothing more monstrous", he says, "than to make two souls in man, the one sensitive, the other rational, really distinct from one another, and to give the name of Astral Spirit to the former; when there is in man no astral spirit save the plastic of the soul itself, which is always inseparable from the rational. Nor upon any other account can it be called astral, but as it is liable to that corporeal temperament which proceeds from the stars, or rather from any material causes in general, as not being yet sufficiently united with the divine body — that vehicle of divine virtue or power". So he maintains that the Kabalistic three souls — Nephesh, Ruach, Neshama — originate in a misunderstanding of the true Platonic doctrine, which is that of a threefold “vital congruity”. These correspond to the three degrees of bodily existence, or to the three vehicles, the terrestrial, the aerial, and the ethereal. The latter is the augoeides — the luciform vehicle of the purified soul whose irrational part has been brought under complete subjection to the rational. The aerial is that in which the great majority of mankind find themselves at the dissolution of the terrestrial body, and in which the incomplete process of purification has to be undergone during long ages of preparation for the soul's return to its primitive etherial state. For it must be remembered that the pre-existence of souls is a distinguishing tenet of this philosophy, as of the Kabala. The soul has "sunk into matter". From its highest original state the revolt of its irrational nature has awakened and developed successively its vital congruities with the regions below passing, by means of its Plastic, first into the aerial and afterwards into the terrestrial condition. Each of these regions teems also with an appropriate population which never passes, like the human soul, from one to the other — "gods”, “demons”, and, "animals”. [The allusion here is to those beings of the several kingdoms of the elements which we Theosophists, following after the Kabalists, have called the “Elementals” ] As to the duration, "the shortest of all is that of the terrestrial vehicle. In the aerial, the soul may inhabit, as they define, many ages, and in the ethereal forever". Speaking [Page 17] of the second body, Henry More says: "The soul's astral vehicle is of that tenuity that itself can as easily pass the smallest pores of the body as the light does glass, or the lightning the scabbard of a sword without tearing or scorching of it". And again: "I shall make bold to assert that the soul may live in an aerial vehicle as well as in the ethereal, and that there are very few that arrive to that high happiness as to acquire a celestial vehicle immediately upon their quitting the terrestrial one, that heavenly chariot necessarily carrying us in triumph to the greatest happiness the soul of man is capable of, which would arrive to all men indifferently, good or bad, if the parting with this earthly body would suddenly mount us into the heavenly, when by a just Nemesis the souls of men that are not heroically virtuous will find themselves restrained within the compass of this caliginous air, as both reason itself suggests, and the Platonists have unanimously determined". Thus, also, the most thorough-going and probably the most deeply versed in the doctrines of the master among modern Platonists, Thomas Taylor (Introduction, Phaedo). "After this our divine philosopher informs that the pure soul will after death return to pure and eternal natures; but that the impure soul, in consequence of being imbued with terrene affections, will be drawn down to a kindred nature, and be invested with a gross vehicle capable of being seen by the corporeal eye. [This is the Hindu theory of nearly every one of the Aryan philosophies] For while a propensity to body remains in the soul, it causes her to attract a certain vehicle to herself, either of an aerial nature or composed from the vapours and spirit of her terrestrial body, or which is recently collected from the surrounding air; for, according to the arcana of the Platonic philosophy, between an etherial body which is simple and immaterial, and is the eternal connate vehicle of the soul, and a terrene body which is material and composite, and of short duration, there is an aerial body which is material indeed, but simple and of a more extended duration; and in this body the unpurified soul dwells for a long while after its exit from hence, till this pneumatic vehicle being dissolved, it is again invested with a composite body; while, on the contrary, the purified soul immediately ascends to the celestial regions with its ethereal vehicle alone."Always it is the disposition of the soul that determines the quality of its body. "However the soul be affected", says Porphyry (translated by Cudworth), "so does it always find a body suitable and agreeable to its present disposition, and therefore to the purged soul does naturally accrue a body that comes next to immateriality, that is, an ethereal one". And the same author: "The soul is never quite naked of all body, but has always some body or other joined with it, suitable and agreeable to its present disposition (either a purer or impurer one). But that at its first quitting this gross earthly body, the spirituous body which accompanieth it (as its vehicle) must needs go away fouled and incrassated with the vapours and steams thereof, till the soul afterwards by degrees purifying itself, this becometh at length a dry [Page 18] splendour, which hath no misty obscurity nor casteth any shadow". Here, it will be seen, we lose sight of the specific difference of the two future vehicles: the ethereal is regarded as a sublimation of the aerial This, however, is opposed to the general consensus of Plato's commentators. Sometimes the ethereal body, or augoeides, is appropriated to the rational soul, or spirit, which must then be considered as a distinct entity, separable from the lower soul. Philoponus, a Christian writer, says "that the rational soul, as to its energy, is separable from all body; but the irrational part, or life thereof, is separable only from this gross body, and not from all body whatsoever, but hath, after death, a spirituous or airy body, in which it acteth — this I say, is a true opinion which shall afterwards be proved by us . . . . The irrational life of the soul hath not all its being in this gross earthly body, but remaineth after the soul's departure out of it, having for its vehicle and subject the spirituous body, which itself is also compounded out of the four elements, but receiveth its denomination from the predominant part, to wit, air, as this gross body of ours is called earthy from what is most predominant therein" (Cudworth, Intell. Syst.). From the same source we extract the following: "Wherefore these ancients say that impure souls, after their departure out of this body, wander here up and down for a certain space in their spirituous, vaporous and airy body, appearing about sepulchers and haunting their former habitation. For which cause there is great reason that we should take care of living well, as also of abstaining from a fouler and grosser diet; these ancients telling us likewise that this spirituous body of ours, being fouled and incrassated by evil diet, is apt to render the soul in this life also more obnoxious to the disturbances of passion. They further add that there is something of the plantal or plastic life, also exercised by the soul, in those spirituous or airy bodies after death; they being nourished, too, though not after the same manner as those gross earthy bodies of ours are here, but by vapours, and that not by parts or organs, but throughout the whole of them (as sponges), they imbibing everywhere those vapours. For which cause those who are wise will in this life also take care of using a thinner and dryer diet, that so that spirituous body (which we have also at this present time within our proper body) may not be clogged and incrassed, but attenuated. Over and above which, those ancients made use of catharms, or purgations, to the same end and purpose also. For as this earthy body is washed by water, so is that spirituous body cleansed by cathartic vapours — some of these vapours being nutritive, others purgative. Moreover, these ancients further declared concerning this spirituous body that it was not organized, but did the whole of it in every part exercise all the functions of sense, the soul hearing, seeing, and perceiving all sensibles by it everywhere. For which cause Aristotle himself affirmeth in his Metaphysics that there is properly but one sense and one sensory. He by this one sensory meaneth the spirit, in subtle airy body, in which the sensitive power doth all of it, through the [Page 19] whole, immediately apprehend all variety of sensibles. And if it be demanded to how it comes to pass that this spirit becomes organized in sepulchers, and most commonly of human form, but sometimes in the forms of other animals, to this these ancients replied that their appearing so frequently in human form proceeded from their being incrassated with evil diet, and then, as it were, stamped upon with the form of this exterior ambient body in which they are, as crystal is formed and coloured like to those things which it is fastened in, or reflects the image of them. And their having sometimes other different forms proceedeth from the phantastic power of the soul itself, which can at pleasure transform the spirituous body into any shape. For being airy, when it is condensed and fixed, it becometh visible, and again invisible and vanishing out of sight when it is expanded and rarified". (Proem in Aristotle, “De Anima”.)

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