Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to
imbrute them.
that I who erst contended With Gods to sit the highest, am now constraind Into a Beast, and mixt with bestial slime, This essence to incarnate and
imbrute, That to the hight of Deitie aspir'd; But what will not Ambition and Revenge Descend to?
To ensure good behavior, the slaveholder relies on the whip; to induce proper humility, he relies on the whip; to rebuke what he is pleased to term insolence, he relies on the whip; to supply the place of wages, as an incentive to toil, he relies on the whip; to bind down the spirit of the slave, to
imbrute and destroy his manhood, he relies on the whip.
216 Incarnare e imbruttir l'Essenza mia > Incarnare e imbrutir l'Essenza mia per This essence to incarnate and
imbrute; v.
Satan is repulsed by the thought of the hypostatic union of his angelic substance with brute matter, 'This essence to incarnate and imbrute' (IX.
The soul grows clotted by contagion, Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite loose The divine property of her first being.
That I who erst contended With gods to sit the highest, am now constrained Into a beast, and mixed with bestial slime, This essence to incarnate and
imbrute, That to the height of deity aspired ...
Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to
imbrute them.
In Book 9 Satan voluntarily adopted the form of the snake to facilitate the Fall of Eve, and yet even as he temporarily changed "This essence to incarnate and
imbrute" to perform his greatest "triumph," he detests the "foul descent" down the scale of being:
His discussion of the nature and significance of Self-Knowledge in Milton's three major poems stresses so well Milton's sense of the power of good and the way that evil
imbrutes humankind as exemplified in the psychology of Adam and Samson and the countervailing Self of the Son and Jesus.
but when lust By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, But most by leud and lavish act of sin, Lets in defilement to the inward parts, The soul grows clotted by contagion, Imbodies, and
imbrutes, till she quite loose The divine property of her first being.