Medical Science and the Anatomia Animata in Milton's Paradise Lost

Chapter 1
Theological imperatives and natural philosophy
i. The material soul of the Christian Doctrine
The animist materialism of the body-soul composite in Paradise Lost is
theorised in the Christian Doctrine. Without wishing to use the Christian Doctrine as a
‘gloss’ on Paradise Lost, this study seeks rather to uncover new levels of congruity and
coherence between the two works. There are three central points that appertain to the
materiality of the human form that are both directly stated in the work of doctrine and
represented in the poem. Perhaps one of the most well known is that of Mortalism;
implied, but never directly stated in Paradise Lost, it is a point of doctrine argued at
some length in the Christian Doctrine. The rational soul, as the primary agent of sin,
receives the same punishment as the rest of the human form; this aspect of the soul will
be explored in chapter 6. Another striking aspect of the soul that Milton describes is its
profoundly embodied state; the terminology used to describe it uses medical lore and
categories of natural philosophy. Finally, Milton’s natural philosophy and his theology
both demand the support of the traducian heresy, that is, the material origin of the
rational soul itself.
In the Christian Doctrine, Milton makes his fundamental point that man “is
not… composed of two different and distinct elements, soul and body… the whole man
is the soul, and the soul the man: a body, in other words, or individual substance,
animated, sensitive and rational.” 59
The drive of Milton’s argument is towards his
famous and peremptory conclusion that:
59 All references are made to Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. Don M. Wolfe et al. 8 vols. (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1953-1982), 6: 317; hereafter cited as CPW by volume and page numbers.
This is a different system to the orthodox Galenic/Aristotelian triumvirate of vegetative, vital and rational.
As we shall see later, this indicates, in fact the anatomy of the late seventeenth century proposed both by
vitalists and by certain mechanists who attributed activity and motive force, if not life, to matter.
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