Read Flesh in the Age of Reason Online
Authors: Roy Porter
Tags: #Non-Fiction, #18th Century, #Cultural Anthropology, #20th Century, #Philosophy, #Science History, #Britain, #Amazon.com, #Retail, #Cultural History, #History
Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, The
158
–9,
164
,
469
misanthropy
303
Modest Proposal, A
(1729)
149
on political greatness
156
–7
‘Strephon and Chloe’ (1731)
150
Struldbrugs
427
Tale of a Tub, A
(1704)
148
,
156
–7,
377
,
464
on women
149
–50,
150
–51,
166
see also
body; identity/self; mind; man/
human beings; soul
Swinden, Tobias,
Enquiry into the Nature and Place of Hell, An
(1714)
100
Swynfen, Dr
172
Tamburlaine
6
Taylor, Edward
372
Taylor, Jeremy,
Holy Dying
(1663)
212
Tedworth, drummer of
89
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord,
In Memoriam
(1850)
473
theatre, evils
272
–3
thiness, fashion for
240
–41,
242
Thirty Years War (1618–48)
307
Thomas Aquinas
37
Thrale, Henry
172
Thrale, Hester
104
,
172
,
173
,
175
,
178
,
188
time, Christian model
34
Tindal, Matthew,
Christianity as Old as the Creation
(1730)
101
Toland, John
362
Tory Party
467
–8
traducianis
165
–6
Tristram Shandy
(1759)
121
,
194
,
254
,
283
,
304
appearance & reality
299
–300
baptism
289
body/mind relationship
294
–6,
297
–9,
302
–3
chance/fate
296
–7
conception & birth
288
–9
education
289
–90
hobby-horses/monomania
293
–4
hypochondria
290
–92
identity/self
300
–301
imprinting, doctrine of
301
–2
and Locke
301
–2
man, interiority of
304
man, paradox of
294
medicine
292
Walter, model for
160
see also
Sterne, Laurence
Trosse, George
274
–6
Life of the Reverend Mr George Trosse, The
(1714)
276
Essay… on Drunkenness
(1804)
400
–401
View of the Nervous Temperament
(1811)
404
Tryon, Thomas
250
–51
Tucker, Abraham,
Light of Nature Pursued
(1768)
219
–20
Tuke, Samuel,
Description of the Retreat
(1813)
318
Turgot, Anne Robert
8
Tyburn riots
224
Tyers, Thomas
174
Underwood, John
220
Unitarianism
363
utilitarianism
10
,
83
,
349
,
368
,
424
,
471
Vanhomrigh, Esther (Swift’s ‘Vanessa’)
150
Vesalius, Andreas
133
Viagra
16
Victoria, Queen
105
Vitruvian Man
244
–5
Vitruvius,
De Architectura
244
–5
Volta, Alessandro
215
Voltaire (
pseud.
François Marie Arouet)
44
Dictionnaire Philosophique
244
Walpole, Horace,
Castle of Otranto, The
(1765)
283
Walpole, Robert
151
Walton, Isaac
191
Watt, Gregory
415
‘Death and Heaven’ (1722)
105
soul
168
Waugh, Evelyn
196
Weber, Max,
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, The
(1904–5)
6
Wesley, John
Primitive Physick
(1747)
229
,
230
Whiston, William,
Eternity of Hell, The
(1740)
101
White, Charles
215
Whole Duty of Man, The
183
Wilberforce, William
403
Williams, Anna
179
Willis, Thomas
55
–6,
57
,
60
–61,
62
,
80
,
162
,
222
,
317
,
351
Cerebri Anatome
(1664)
55
–6
De Anima Brutorum (1672)
56
nervous system, concept of
309
Pathologiae Cerebri
(1667)
56
soul, rational
57
–60
Winslow, Jacques-Bénigne
215
Winstanley, Gerrard
81
Winterreise
10
witchcraft
see
supernatural phenomena
Wollstonecraft, Mary
220
,
226
,
284
early years
264
Female Reader, The
(1789)
266
and Godwin
420
misogyny
269
–70
role of women
267
–8
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters
(1787)
265
–6,
268
–71
Vindication of the Rights of Men, A
(1790)
266
Vindication of the Rights of Woman, A
(1792)
258
,
266
women
appearance & cosmetics
252
–3,
268
–9
eroticized
266
–7
female perspectives on
257
,
258
,
262
–4
identity/self-hood
257
,
263
–4,
265
,
271
,
282
madness in
317
male perspectives on
258
–62
masturbation
270
–71
romanticization
268
Excursion, The
(1709)
394
–5
Wren, Christopher
469
Xenophanes
140
York Asylum
318
York Retreat
318
Young, Edward,
Night Thoughts
(1742–5)
470
*
This absence of any notion of a disembodied soul, or a heaven or hell, was widely noted by enlightened freethinkers, who exploited it in various ways in their attempts to discredit Judaism, Christianity or religion in general.
*
The fascinating but complex philological issues raised by soul-language cannot here be discussed. But it should be remembered that the soul underpins a whole series of symbols. The chief of these symbols is
breath
, and all its derivatives. The etymology of the Latin word
animus
is in itself related to ‘breath’ and ‘air’ as principles of life.
Animus
is the intellectual principle and the seat of desire and the passions, and corresponds to the Greek
anemos
and the Sanskrit
aniti
, meaning ‘breath’. Its properties are intellectual and emotional and its range male, while the
anima
is the principle of inhaling and exhaling air and its range is female. Without claiming to teach a complete and coherent system of anthropology, St Paul distinguishes within the individual spirit (
pneuma
), soul (
psyche
) and body (
soma
). If Thessalonians 5: 23 is compared with 1 Corinthians 15: 44, it will be seen that it is the soul
psyche
which vitalizes the human body while the spirit
pneuma
is that part of the individual which is exposed to a higher level of life and to the direct influence of the Holy Spirit. It is the latter which is to benefit from salvation and from immortality and the latter which grace makes holy. However, its influence should be radiated by the psyche throughout the body and consequently throughout the individual as a whole, that is, the body which lives and moves in this world and will be resurrected in the life to come.
*
Such issues (especially the implication of sex in sin) inevitably posed the question of the propagation and transmission of the soul: when and how did man get his soul? Augustine’s insistence on its spiritual nature made it hard for him to uphold, along with Tertullian, the doctrine of physical traducianism. Nevertheless, he did link Original Sin with procreation, which was suggestive of the idea that the infant’s soul came in some way from the parents’ copulation. His solution to this ever-delicate problem was what he might call spiritual traducianism: the soul of the child came from the soul of the parent. Thus, the transmission of Original Sin was explained, and the spirituality of the soul safeguarded.
*
Coleridge was derisive because he was a demanding patient and also an erstwhile materialist himself.
*
Such views were possible because Locke played down the Fall; he resolutely insisted on the capabilities of human understanding. The Christian God could be known, as could nature and nature’s laws. Locke was no sceptic; he sought not to deny truth, its pursuit or its attainability but to set it on a sound footing.
*
The Sadducees, it will be remembered, were the influential Jewish group who denied the reality of spirits.
*
Swift had a terror of ageing – and rightly so as he did indeed grow senile.