n absolute truth that when man rises to the royalty of spirit every
element will be his obedient servant. Thought will be the agent of his
ministries; which the poet has so marvellously portrayed in its
personification as Ariel. Ariel says: "Thy thoughts I cleave to;" and
Prospero, in calling him, "Come with a thought." It is now claimed by
the most advanced and best psychologists, that a forceful, living
thought does become a real embodiment which may be perceived by the
finer senses. Ariel was what the mind of his master made him, sometimes
a sprite, sometimes a sea-nymph, again a harpy, anything and everything
the master directed.

Sycorax symbolized ignorance, and thought had been long imprisoned in
the holds of nature by this creature of darkness, but ever painfully
struggling to reach the light. Ignorance imprisoned thought, but could
not free it. Prospero, as wisdom, gave it freedom and directed its
action until he could send it forth in still more glorious freedom.
Freedom of thought is a dominant strain in the drama, and is even sung
by the "reeling ripe" Stephano. Caliban represents the child of
ignorance, closely allied to nature and partaking of its poetry and
grandeur. He is man in his first estate, just emerging from the animal.
Yet, in this crude, forbidding aspect how superior in dignity compared
with Stephano and Trinculo in their vile abasement through the vices of
civilization.

Shakspere's knowledge of the power of thought over the body is shown in
his saying that Sycorax, "through age and envy, had grown into a hoop;"
and of Caliban that, "As with age his body uglier grows, so his mind
cankers." It is not strange that Shakspere perceived the new psychology,
for Milton sang--

Oft Converse with heavenly habitants
Begins to cast a beam on the outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind,
And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence,
Till all be made immortal.

The poet Spenser most beautifully expresses this truth in saying:

So every spirit, as it is more pure,
And hath in it the more of heavenly light,
So it the fairer body doth procure
To habit in....
For of the soul the body form doth take,
For soul is form, and doth the body make.

This is the teaching also of St. Paul, that the body must be transformed
by the renewing of the mind.

Here we perceive the source of the heavenly beauty and grace of Miranda.
"The pure in heart shall see