Platonism is where Adams lodges the doctrine of souls sent down from the world-soul into mortal bodies, the ascent-and-descent scheme the prisca theologia carries alongside Pythagoras.
In Hannah Adams
In Adams’s own words, from the 1817 Dictionary. Each passage is quoted verbatim under its own entry.
PYTHAGOREANS, the fol- (
PLATGNISTS. The Platonic philosophy is denominated from Plato, who was born about two hundred and sixty seven years before Christ. He founded the old academy on the opinions of Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and Socrates; and by adding the information he had acquired to their discoveries, he established a sect of philosophers, who were estecmed: more perfect than any who had before appeared in the world.
The outlines of Plato’s philosophical system were as follow: —That there is one God, eternal, immutable, and immaterial; perfect in wisdom and goodness; omniscient, and omnipresent. ‘That this all-perfect Being forined the universe out of a mass of eternally preexisting matter, to which he gave form and arrangement. ‘That there is in matter a necessary, but blind and refractory force, which resists the will of the supreme Artificer; so that he cannot perfectly execute his designs: and this is the cause of the mixture of good and evil, which is found in the material world. ‘That the soul of man was derived by emanation from God; but that this emanation was not immediate, but through the intervention of the soul of the world, which was itself debased by some material admixture. That the relation which the human soul, in its original constitution, bears to matter, is the source of moral evil. That when God formed the universe, he separated from the soul of the world inferiour souls, equal in number to the stars, and assigned to each its proper celestial abode. ‘That these souls were sent down to earth to be imprisoned in mortal bodies; hence arose the depravity and misery to which human nature is liable. ‘That the soul is immortal: and by disengaging itself from all animal passions, and rising above sensible objects to the contemplation of the world of intelligence, it may be prepared to return to its original habitation. That matter never suffers annihilation: but that the world will remain forever; and that by the action of its animating principle, it accomplishes certain periods, within which every thing returns to its ancient place and state.
Hannah Adams, A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations, 4th ed. (Boston: Cummings and Hilliard, 1817), entries “Pythagoreans” (p. 239), “Platonists” (pp. 224–225).