"
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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 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
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 lower 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.
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