parts or organs, but throughout the whole of them (as sponges), they
imbibing everywhere those vapours. For which cause they 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 throughout exercise
all 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, or subtle airy body, in which
the sensitive power doth all of it through the whole immediately
apprehend all variety of sensibles. And if it be demanded to how it
comes to pass that this spirit becomes organized in sepulchres, and most
commonly of human form, but sometimes in the forms of other animals, to
this those 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 that 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 Arist. de Anima. And Cudworth
says, "Though spirits or ghosts had certain supple bodies which they