Richard Sugg, The Smoke of the Soul: Medicine, Physiology and Religion in Early Modern England

Abstract

This engaging book chronicling the views of early modern philosophers, divines, physicians and poets examines the identity of the soul between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. During this period the soul was a matter of the greatest concern, and what mattered most was the nature of its substance. Innumerable questions and dilemmas arose out of this conundrum: Was the soul mortal or immortal? Was it corporeal or incorporeal? Was it an entelecheia (i.e. a principle of organisation) or an endelecheia (a principle of motion)? Was it ‘assisting’ or ‘inhering’ in the life of the body, transmitted by parents or created every time anew by God? Was it ‘organic’ or ‘inorganic’, individual or universal, eternal or transient, enslaved or free, asleep or regenerated, female or male, irrational or rational, animal or human, human or non-human, undescended or reincarnated, conscious or unconscious? Was it scattered in every single part of the body