Thus But there are degrees of beauty, even among the inhabitants of heaven, for "the splendor and beauty of personal shape in the better sort of genii assuredly is greater or lesser according to the degrees of virtue and moral affections in them." Milton's great angels outshine in glory the lesser. Though the natural shape of angels be a shape like that of human beings, yet both Milton and More held that they can and do change that shape "by the imperium of the will." When they are bound on messages from God, for instance, they appear now one way, now another. Moreover, the baser spirits frequently descend to animal shapes in order to carry out their purposes. More, like Milton, divides sharply his "good" from his "base" spirits. The evil, though their natural appearance is also the human form, are seen "disguis'd with ugly circumstances" (p. 193) and they pass from one sort of animal to another at will, choosing, More thinks, those animals most like themselves in their purposes or natures. "The variety of their impurities may dispose them to turn themselves irto one brutish shape rather than another; as envying, or admiring, or in some sort approving and liking the condition and properties of such and such beasts" (p. 193). One sees this same idea in the various figures of speech through which Milton gradually suggests the degeneration of Satan. Satan is at first compared with Leviathan, with a mighty tower, with the sun in eclipse, with a weather-beaten vessel. But when he descends upon Eden he is a vulture; he climbs over the wall of the garden like a wolf; he sits like a cormorant on the Tree of Life; he takes the shape first of one animal, then of another, as he watches Adam and Eve; he is found by the angels " squat like a toad" at the ear of Eve; he springs up like powder when the spark is applied; then "like a proud steed reined went haughty on "; ultimately, of course, he becomes the serpent. Some of these are figures of speech; but enough of them indicate actual change of form to show that Milton's idea is similar to More's. More comments, too, on a fact that Milton uses without comment: "No forced thing can last long," he says, and therefore an evil spirit cannot long retain a borrowed shape. Moreover, More declares, no matter how a dæmon may be disguised, "upon command he will be forced to appear in his natural and usual form, not daring to deny upon examination to what particular subdivision he belongs" (p. 204). That sentence might almost have been the motivation in Milton's mind for the magnificent scene in which Satan, surprised by Ithuriel and Zephon, in the shape of a toad, springs up in his own shape, and scornfully replies to the questions of the angels." Both More and Milton discuss the question of the sex of angels. Milton says (1. 422): those male, These feminine. For Spirits, when they please, an idea which he suggess in several other passages also. "In all likelihood," says More (p. 166), "the soul in her self is as much of one sex as another." And since, according to More's axiom, the soul has the power of changing both the shape and the temper of her "aiery vehicle," spirits may change from one sex to another at will, though both More and Milton held that the pure spirit is a combination of the two sexes. When we seek to determine the motion of these celestial beings, we find More vague, Milton definite. Milton's angels are clearly winged beings and their usual method of moving about seems to be either flying or walking. But they may make use of other means of locomotion. Satan in his journey through Chaos (II. 949 ff.): With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, Sometimes Milton's angels walk on the ground, sometimes a whole • For instances of change of form in Paradise Lost cf. 1, 423, 777, 789; III, 634; IV, 396, 799, 835; v, 276; x, 574; XI, 238. 10 Cf. in general II, 950, 1012, 1041; vi, 71; x, 90. is neither by fins or wings as in fishes or birds. . . but it is merely by the direction of the agitation of their vehicles toward the place they aim at; and in such a swiftness or leisureliness as best pleases themselves, and is competible to their natures, (p. 181), an idea which follows from More's definition of the soul as "self-moving substance." The second general aspect of the physical nature of spirits which we must examine is their capacity of sense perception. Even a casual reader of Milton is impressed with the sensuousness of his heaven, the joy which his spirits take in the pleasures of the body -particularly striking, of course, to those who think of Milton as a Puritan. In this, as indeed in many of the other similarities between the two men, the secret lies in the fact that both More and Milton were sons of the Renaissance; in the work of both there is a fusion of paganism and Christianity. It is hardly necessary to recall in detail the Olympian characteristics of Milton's heaven; feasting and singing play a great part in the spirit world of both. Milton and More. Milton, in a very familiar passage of the fifth book of Paradise Lost, describes the feast in Eden to which Adam, with simple dignity, bids his angel guest, though he questions at the same time whether Raphael will eat their human fare, "unsavory food, perhaps, to spiritual natures" (v. 402). Raphael replies to him that "intelligential substances" require food, and, like “rational substances" they contain Within them every lower faculty Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste, And corporeal to incorporeal turn. More's axiom, that the soul is capable of sense pleasure and pain, has already been quoted. In the fourth chapter of his treatise, he goes into detail to prove that souls are possessed of all the bodily senses which man has, though these senses are developed to a more exquisite perception. Thus, for example, they can see us, though we cannot see them, and they can hear our voices and our music though their celestial harmonies are inaudible to our gross ears. And, to speak freely my mind,' concludes More, "it will be a very hard thing to disprove that they have not something analogical to smell and taste" (p. 177). "So that the nectar and ambrosia of the poets," he says later, 66 may not be a mere fable. For the spirit of nature, which is the immediate instrument of God, may enrich the fruits of these aëreal paradises with such liquors, as being received into the bodies of these purer dæmons and diffusing it self through their vehicles, may cause such grateful motions analogical to our taste and exercise such a more than ordinary quickness in their minds, and benign chearfulness, that it may by far transcend the most delicate refection that the greatest Epicures could ever invent upon Earth; and that without all satiety and burdensomeness, it filling them with nothing but Divine Love, Joy, and Devotion (p. 202). That Milton imagined his spirits not only possessed of a sense of smell, but delighting in it, is evident. "Ambrosial fragrance filled all heaven"; (III, 135); "his altar breathes ambrosial odours" (II, 244); the "buxom air" is "embalmed with odours" (II, 842); All things that breathe From th' Earth's great altar send up silent praise (IX, 194) Milton's angels are possessed of clear sight: Uriel is "the sharpestsighted spirit of all in heaven," and in the third book Milton mentions the great distance that Satan can see. But Milton would deny, as More denied, one of the common contentions of many writers on spirits, that they "see in all parts." In Chapter IV More discusses this point, contending that the visive faculty is in separation as it is in the terrestrial body. However, he leaves opportunity for believing that spirits may see "around, about, behind, before, above, beneath"; they certainly see more clearly than do mortals, and from a greater distance-save that More would discriminate in this respect between the inhabitants of the aërial and of the ætherial worlds. Both Milton's and More's spirits are capable of sleeping. The slumber in which we first behold Milton's fallen angels may seem rather unconsciousness, though they spring up at the sound of Satan's voice. But Satan himself inquires in that same scene whether they propose "to slumber here as in the vales of Heaven " (1, 321); when Raphael describes the heavenly regions to Adam, he pictures the angels "where they slept, fanned with cool winds" (v, 654). In general, both Milton and More hold that spirits enjoy in a high degree all the bodily pleasures of which man is capable. With the passage in Paradise Lost in which Raphael answers Adam's query as to the love which exists between heavenly spirits, (VIII, 620 ff.) may be compared these words of More's (p. 200) These sing, and play, and dance together, reaping the lawful pleasures of the very animal life, in a far higher degree than we are capable of in this world. For every thing here does, as it were, taste of the cask, and has some coarseness and foulness with it. The sweet motions of the spirits in the passion of love can very hardly be commanded off from the near bordering upon the shameful sense of lust; the fabrick of the terrestrial body almost necessitating them to that deviation. . . . In that other state, where the fancy consults with that first exemplar of beauty, Intellectual Love and Virtue, and the body is wholly obedient to the imagination of the mind, and will to every punctilio yield to the impresses of that inward pattern; nothing there can be found amiss, every touch and stroke of motion and beauty being convey'd from so judicious a power through so delicate and depurate a medium. Wherefore they cannot but enravish one anothers souls, while they are mutual spectators of the perfect pulchritude of one anothers person and comely carriage, of their graceful dancing, their melodious singing and playing. One important point both More and Milton make in this connection to human beings physical life is a necessity; with the angelic host, it has become a spiritualized pleasure. More says of the various kinds of angels: "It is not improbable but that both may have their times of refection, for pleasure at least if not necessity." Raphael declares: For we have also our evening and our morn- As the spirits are capable of feeling pleasure, so are they capable of feeling pain. "Then Satan first knew pain," Milton writes of the battle in heaven; and the fallen angels are still shuddering over the memory of pain when they speak in the Council of Pandemonium; God has become to them "The Torturer "; some among them question whether it is worth existing if pain is to be their lot. More declares that transgressions among the aërial genii are punished, and part of that punishment consists in physical pain. "We may be assured," he writes, "(that they) are punished with torture intolerable" (p. 204). The kinds of punishment More suggests are much the same as those which Milton's fallen angels suffer. More draws a lurid picture of subterranean caverns, volcanic mountains, fissures in the earth from which issue flames and |