Colourful Catholic alchemist, philosopher and interpreter of seventeenth-century corpuscularianism. Digby’s brilliance took him through a celebrated marriage to Venetia Stanley, naval engagements, diplomatic missions, duels, exile, and eventually to becoming a founding member of the Royal Society. The Private Memoirs of Sir Kenelm Digby, Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to King Charles the First is now but a literary curiosity. His philosophical reputation hinges on Two Treatises: in the one of which, the nature of bodies, in the other, the nature of man’s mind, is looked into defending the immateriality and immortality of the soul, published in Paris in 1644.