THE SOUL
Many religions and spiritual paths believe in the
soul. In the teachings
of Tao of Heaven, soul is also the "True Self" which is the only real thing
and every other things are impermanence. The "False Self" is our body which
will die one day but the soul lives forever and it is eternal. I was a
Christian
for 15 years from 1977 to 1993 until a miracle happened. For 15 years, my
faith was true until now, as I see God is the same. We are all children of
God
and he does not differentiate between colors, rich or poor. Only human makes
it different and called themselves Christian, Buddhist, Taoist,
Muslim....but
before the founders, there was no religion and yet human still returns to
Heaven. An article from the web about the Soul.
TA Chew - Home page
Soul
(Greek psyche; Latin anima; French ame; German Seele).
The question of the reality of the soul and its
distinction from the body is
among the most important problems of
philosophy, for
with it is bound up
the doctrine of a
future life. Various theories as to the
nature of the
soul
have claimed to be reconcilable with the tenet of
immortality, but it
is a
sure instinct that
leads us to suspect every attack on the substantiality
or spirituality of the soul as an assault on the
belief in
existence after
death.
The soul may be defined as the ultimate internal principle by
which we think,
feel, and will, and by which our bodies are animated. The
term "mind" usually
denotes this principle as the subject of our
conscious states,
while "soul"
denotes the source of our vegetative activities as well. That our vital
activities proceed from a principle capable of subsisting in itself, is the
thesis
of the substantiality of the soul: that this principle is not
itself composite,
extended, corporeal, or essentially and intrinsically dependent on the body,
is the doctrine of
spirituality. If there be a life after death,
clearly the agent
or subject of our vital activities must be capable of an
existence separate
from
the body. The belief
in an animating principle in some sense distinct from the
body is an almost inevitable inference from the observed facts of
life. Even
uncivilized peoples arrive at the concept of the soul almost
without reflection,
certainly without any severe
mental effort. The
mysteries of birth and death,
the lapse of
conscious
life during sleep and in swooning, even the commonest
operations of
imagination and
memory, which
abstract a man from his bodily
presence even while awake-all such facts invincibly suggest the
existence of
something besides the visible organism, internal to it, but to a large
extent
independent of it, and leading a life of its own. In the rude
psychology of
the primitive nations, the soul is often represented as
actually migrating to
and fro during
dreams and trances,
and after death haunting the neighbourhood
of its body. Nearly always it is figured as something extremely volatile, a
perfume
or a breath. Often, as among the Fijians, it is represented as a miniature
replica
of the body, so small as to be invisible. The
Samoans have a name
for the soul
which means "that which comes and goes". Many peoples, such as the Dyaks
and Sumatrans, bind various parts of the body with cords during sickness to
prevent the escape of the soul. In short, all the evidence
goes to show that
Dualism, however
uncritical and inconsistent, is the instinctive
creed of
"primitive
man" (see ANIMISM).
THE SOUL IN ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
Early literature bears the same stamp of
Dualism. In the
"Rig-Veda" and other
liturgical books of
India, we find
frequent references to the coming and going
of manas (mind or soul). Indian
philosophy, whether
Brahminic or
Buddhistic,
with its various systems of
metempsychosis,
accentuated the distinction of
soul and body, making the bodily life a mere
transitory episode in the
existence
of the soul. They all taught the
doctrine of
limited immortality,
ending either
with the periodic world-destruction (Brahminism)
or with attainment of Nirvana
(Buddhism). The
doctrine of a world-soul in a highly abstract form is met
with
as early as the eighth century before Christ, when we find it described as
"the
unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unknown knower,
the Eternal
in which
space is woven and which is woven in it."
In Greece,
on the other hand, the first essays of
philosophy took a
positive and
somewhat materialistic direction, inherited from the pre-philosophic age,
from
Homer and the early Greek religion. In Homer, while the
distinction of soul and
body is recognized, the
soul is hardly conceived as possessing a
substantial
existence
of its own. Severed from the body, it is a mere shadow, incapable of
energetic life.
The philosophers
did something to correct such views. The earliest
school was that
of the Hylozoists;
these conceived the soul as a kind of cosmic force, and
attributed
animation to the whole of
nature. Any
natural force might be designated psyche: thus
Thales uses this term for the attractive force of the magnet, and similar
language is
quoted even from Anaxagoras and Democritus. With this we may compare the
"mind-stuff" theory and Pan-psychism of certain
modern
scientists. Other
philosophers
again described the
soul's
nature in terms of
substance.
Anaximander gives it an
aeriform constitution, Heraclitus describes it as a fire. The fundamental
thought is
the same. The cosmic ether or fire is the subtlest of the elements, the
nourishing
flame which imparts heat, life, sense, and
intelligence to all things in their several
degrees and kinds. The Pythagoreans taught that the soul is a
harmony, its
essence
consisting in those perfect mathematical ratios which are the
law of the
universe and
the music of the
heavenly spheres.
With this doctrine
was combined, according to
Cicero, the belief
in a universal world-spirit, from which all particular souls
are derived.
All these early theories were
cosmological rather
than
psychological in
character.
Theology,
physics, and mental
science were not as
yet distinguished. It is only with
the rise of
dialectic and the growing recognition of the problem of
knowledge that a
genuinely
psychological theory became possible. In
Plato the two
standpoints, the
cosmological and
the epistemological,
are found combined. Thus in the "Timaeus"
(p. 30) we find an account derived from
Pythagorean sources
of the origin of the
soul. First the world-soul is
created according
to the laws of
mathematical symmetry
and musical concord. It is composed of two elements, one an element of
"sameness"
(tauton), corresponding to the universal and intelligible order of
truth, and the
other
an element of distinction or "otherness" (thateron), corresponding to
the world of
sensible and particular existences. The
individual human
soul is constructed on the
same plan. Sometimes, as in the "Phaedrus",
Plato teaches the
doctrine of
plurality
of souls (cf. the well-known allegory of the charioteer and
the two steeds in that dialogue).
The rational soul was located in the head, the passionate or
spirited soul in the breast,
the appetitive soul in the abdomen. In the "Republic",
instead of the triple soul, we
find the doctrine
of three elements within the complex unity of the single
soul. The
question of immortality
was a principal subject of
Plato's
speculations. His account
of the origin of the soul in the "Timaeus" leads him to deny
the intrinsic
immortality
even of the world-soul, and to admit only an
immortality
conditional on the good
pleasure of God. In
the "Phaedo" the chief argument for the
immortality of the
soul is based on the
nature of
intellectual
knowledge
interpreted on the theory
of reminiscence; this of course implies the pre-existence of the
soul, and perhaps
in strict logic its
eternal
pre-existence. There is also an argument from the soul's
necessary
participation in the
idea of life, which, it is argued, makes the
idea of
its extinction impossible. These various lines of argument are nowhere
harmonized
in Plato (see
IMMORTALITY). The
Platonic doctrine
tended to an extreme
Transcendentalism.
Soul and body are distinct orders of reality, and bodily
existence
involves a kind of
violence to the higher part of our composite
nature.
The body is the "prison", the "tomb", or even, as some later
Platonists
expressed it, the "hell" of the soul. In
Aristotle this
error is avoided.
His
definition of the soul as "the first entelechy of a physical
organized body
potentially possessing life" emphasizes the
closeness of the union of soul
and body. The difficulty in his theory is to determine what degree of
distinctness or separateness from the matter of
the body is to be
conceded to the human soul. He fully recognizes the spiritual
element
in thought and describes the "active
intellect" (nous
poetikos) as
"separate and impassible", but the precise relation of this active
intellect to the
individual
mind is a
hopelessly obscure question in
Aristotle's
psychology. (See
INTELLECT;
MIND.)
The Stoics
taught that all
existence is
material, and described the soul
as a breath pervading the body. They also called it Divine, a particle of
God
(apospasma tou theu) -- it was composed of the most refined and
ethereal
matter. Eight distinct parts of the
soul were recognized by them:
- the ruling reason (to hegemonikon)
- the five senses;
- the procreative powers.
conflagration and destruction of all things, some of them (e.g. Cleanthes and Chrysippus)
admitted in the case of the wise man; others, such as Panaetius and Posidonius, denied
even this, arguing that, as the soul began with the body, so it must end with it.
Epicureanism
accepted the Atomist
theory of Leucippus and Democritus. Soul
consists of the finest grained
atoms in the
universe, finer
even than those of
wind and heat which they resemble: hence the exquisite fluency of the
soul's
movements in thought and sensation. The soul-atoms themselves, however,
could not exercise their functions if they were not kept together by the
body.
It is this which gives shape and consistency to the group. If this is
destroyed,
the atoms
escape and life is dissolved; if it is injured,
part of the soul is lost,
but enough may be left to maintain life. The
Lucretian version of
Epicureanism
distinguishes between animus and anima: the latter only is
soul in the
biological
sense, the former is the higher, directing principle (to hegemonikon)
in the Stoic
terminology, whose seat is the heart, the centre of the cognitive and
emotional life.
THE SOUL IN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT
Graeco-Roman
philosophy made no
further progress in the
doctrine of the soul in
the age immediately preceding the
Christian era. None
of the existing theories had
found general
acceptance, and in
the literature of the period an
eclectic
spirit
nearly akin to
Scepticism
predominated. Of the strife and fusion of systems at
this time
the works of Cicero are the best example. On the question of the
soul
he is by turns Platonic
and
Pythagorean, while he confesses that the
Stoic and
Epicurean systems
have each an attraction for him. Such was the state of the
question in the West at the dawn of
Christianity. In
Jewish circles a
like
uncertainty prevailed. The
Sadducees were
Materialists,
denying immortality
and all spiritual
existence. The
Pharisees
maintained these doctrines, adding
belief in
pre-existence and transmigration. The
psychology of the
Rabbins is
founded on the Sacred Books, particularly the account of the
creation of
man
in Genesis. Three terms are used for the soul: nephesh,
nuah, and neshamah;
the first was taken to refer to the animal and vegetative
nature, the second
to
the ethical
principle, the third to the purely spiritual intelligence. At all events,
it is evident that the
Old Testament throughout either asserts or implies the
distinct reality of the soul. An important contribution to
later Jewish
thought
was the infusion of
Platonism into it by Philo of
Alexandria. He
taught the
immediately Divine origin of the soul, its pre-existence and
transmigration;
he contrasts the pneuma, or spiritual
essence, with the
soul proper, the
source of vital phenomena, whose seat is the blood; finally he revived the
old Platonic
Dualism,
attributing the origin of
sin and
evil to the union
of spirit
with matter.
It was Christianity
that, after many centuries of struggle, applied the final criticisms
to the various psychologies of antiquity, and brought their scattered
elements of
truth to full
focus. The tendency of
Christ's teaching was to centre all
interest in
the spiritual side of
man's
nature; the
salvation or loss
of the soul is the great
issue of
existence. The Gospel language is popular, not technical.
Psyche and
pneuma are used indifferently either for the principle of natural
life or for spirit
in the strict sense. Body and soul are recognized as a
dualism and their
values
contrasted: "Fear ye not them that kill the body . . . but rather
fear him that
can destroy both soul and body in
hell."
In St. Paul we
find a more technical phraseology employed with great consistency.
Psyche is now appropriated to the purely natural
life; pneuma to the life of
supernatural
religion, the principle of which is the
Holy Spirit,
dwelling and
operating in the heart. The opposition of flesh and
spirit is accentuated afresh
(Romans 1:18,
etc.). This Pauline system, presented to a world already
prepossessed in favour of a quasi-Platonic
Dualism, occasioned
one of the
earliest widespread forms of
error among
Christian writers
-- the doctrine
of the Trichotomy. According to this,
man, perfect
man (teleios)
consists
of three parts: body,
soul, spirit (soma, psyche, pneuma).
Body and soul
come by natural generation; spirit is given to the
regenerate
Christian alone.
Thus, the "newness of life", of which
St. Paul speaks,
was conceived by some
as a superadded entity, a kind of oversoul sublimating the "natural
man" into
a higher
species. This
doctrine was variously distorted in the different
Gnostic
systems. The Gnostics
divided man
into three classes:
- pneumatici or spiritual,
- psychici or animal,
- choici or earthy.
of Achemoth, and were destined to return in time whence they had sprung -- namely, into
the pleroma. Even in this life they are exempted from the possibility of a fall from their high
calling; they therefore stand in no need of good works, and have nothing to fear from the
contaminations of the world and the flesh. This class consists of course of the Gnostics
themselves. The psychici are in a lower position: they have capacities for spiritual life
which they must cultivate by good works. They stand in a middle place, and may either
rise to the spiritual or sink to the hylic level. In this category stands the Christian Church
at large. Lastly, the earthy souls are a mere material emanation, destined to perish: the matter
of which they are composed being incapable of salvation (me gar einai ten hylen dektiken
soterias). This class contains the multitudes of the merely natural man.
Two features claim attention in this the earliest essay towards a
complete
anthropology within the
Christian Church:
- an extreme spirituality is attributed to "the perfect";
- immortality is conditional for the second class of souls, not an intrinsic attribute of all souls.
elements which were observed to exist in all souls, and that it was only by an afterthought
that they were employed, according to the respective predominance of these elements in
different cases, to represent supposed real classes of men. The doctrine of the four
temperaments and the Stoic ideal of the Wise Man afford a parallel for the personification
of abstract qualities. The true genius of Christianity, expressed by the Fathers of the early
centuries, rejected Gnosticism. The ascription to a creature of an absolutely spiritual nature,
and the claim to endless existence asserted as a strictly de jure privilege in the case of the
"perfect", seemed to them an encroachment on the incommunicable attributes of God. The
theory of Emanation too was seen to be a derogation from the dignity of the Divine nature
For this reason, St. Justin, supposing that the doctrine of natural immortality logically implies
eternal existence, rejects it, making this attribute (like Plato in the "Timaeus") dependent on
the free will of God; at the same time he plainly asserts the de facto immortality of every
human soul. The doctrine of conservation, as the necessary complement of creation, was
not yet elaborated. Even in Scholastic philosophy, which asserts natural immortality, the
abstract possibility of annihilation through an act of God's absolute power is also admitted.
Similarly, Tatian denies the simplicity of the soul, claiming that absolute simplicity belongs to
God alone. All other beings, he held, are composed of matter and spirit. Here again it would
be rash to urge a charge of Materialism. Many of these writers failed to distinguish between
corporeity in strict essence and corporeity as a necessary or natural concomitant. Thus the
soul may itself be incorporeal and yet require a body as a condition of its existence. In this
sense St. Irenĉus attributes a certain "corporeal character" to the soul; he represents it as
possessing the form of its body, as water possesses the form of its containing vessel. At the
same time, he teaches fairly explicitly the incorporeal nature of the soul. He also sometimes
uses what seems to be the language of the Trichotomists, as when he says that in the
Resurrection men shall have each their own body, soul, and spirit. But such an interpretation
is impossible in view of his whole position in regard to the Gnostic controversy.
The dubious language of these writers can only be understood in relation
to the
system they were opposing. By assigning a literal divinity to a certain
small
aristocracy of souls,
Gnosticism set
aside the doctrine
of Creation
and the
whole Christian
idea of
God's relation to
man. On the other
side, by its extreme
dualism of
matter and spirit, and its denial to
matter (i.e. the flesh) of all capacity
for spiritual influences, it involved the rejection of cardinal doctrines
like the
Resurrection of the
Body and even of the
Incarnation itself
in any proper sense.
The orthodox
teacher had to emphasize:
- the soul's distinction from God and subjection to Him;
- its affinities with matter.
distinction from matter, were apt to be obscured in comparison. It was only afterwards and
very gradually, with the development of the doctrine of grace, with the fuller recognition of the
supernatural order as such, and the realization of the Person and Office of the Holy Spirit,
that the various errors connected with the pneuma ceased to be a stumbling-block to
Christian psychology. Indeed, similar errors have accompanied almost every subsequent
form of heterodox Illuminism and Mysticism.
Tertullian's
treatise "De
Anima" has been called the first
Christian classic
on
psychology proper.
The author aims to show the failure of all
philosophies to
elucidate the
nature of the
soul, and argues eloquently that Christ alone can
teach mankind the
truth on such
subjects. His own
doctrine, however, is simply
the refined Materialism
of the Stoics,
supported by arguments from
medicine and
physiology and by ingenious interpretations of
Scripture, in which
the unavoidable
materialism of
language is made to establish a
metaphysical
Materialism.
Tertullian
is the founder of the theory of
Traducianism, which
derives the rational soul ex traduce,
i.e. by procreation from the soul of the
parent. For
Tertullian this was
a necessary
consequence of
Materialism. Later writers found in the
doctrine a
convenient
explanation of the transmission of
original sin.
St. Jerome says
that in his day
it was the common theory in the West.
Theologians have
long abandoned it,
however, in favour of
Creationism, as it
seems to compromise the spirituality
of the soul.
Origen taught the
pre-existence of the soul. Terrestrial
life is a
punishment and a remedy for prenatal
sin. "Soul" is
properly
degraded spirit:
flesh is a
condition of alienation and bondage (cf. Comment. ad
Romans 1:18).
Spirit, however, finite spirit, can exist only in
a body, albeit of a
glorious and
ethereal
nature.
Neo-Platonism,
which through St.
Augustine contributed so much to spiritual
philosophy,
belongs to this period. Like
Gnosticism, it uses
emanations. The
primeval and
eternal One begets
by emanation nous (intelligence); and from
nous in turn springs psyche (soul), which is the
image of nous, but distinct
from it. Matter is a still later emanation.
Soul has relations to both ends of
the scale of reality, and its perfection lies in turning towards the Divine
Unity
from which it came. In everything, the
neo-Platonist
recognized the absolute
primacy of the
soul with respect to the body. Thus, the
mind is always
active,
even in sense -- perception -- it is only the body that is passively
affected by
external stimuli. Similarly Plotinus prefers to say that the body is in the
soul
rather than vice versa: and he seems to have been the first to conceive the
peculiar manner of the soul's location as an undivided and
universal presence
pervading the organism (tota in toto et tota in singulis partibus).
It is impossible
to give more than a very brief notice of the
psychology of St.
Augustine. His
contributions to every branch of the
science were
immense; the senses, the
emotions, imagination,
memory, the
will, and the intellect
-- he explored them
all, and there is scarcely any subsequent development of importance that he
did not forestall. He is the founder of the introspective method. Noverim
Te,
noverim me was an
intellectual no less than a devotional aspiration with him.
The following are perhaps the chief points for our present purpose:
- he opposes body and soul on the ground of the irreducible distinction of thought and extension (cf. DESCARTES). St. Augustine, however, lays more stress on the volitional activities than did the French Idealists.
- As against the Manichĉans he always asserts the worth and dignity of the body. Like Aristotle he makes the soul the final cause of the body. As God is the Good or Summum Bonum of the soul, so is the soul the good of the body.
- The origin of the soul is perhaps beyond our ken. He never definitely decided between Traducianism and Creationism.
- As regards spirituality, he is everywhere most explicit, but it is interesting as an indication of the futile subtleties current at the time to find him warning a friend against the controversy on the corporeality of the soul, seeing that the term "corpus" was used in so many different senses. "Corpus, non caro" is his own description of the angelic body.
Medieval
psychology prior to
the Aristotelean
revival was affected by
neo-Platonism,
Augustinianism, and
mystical influences
derived from the works of
pseudo-Dionysius.
This fusion produced sometimes, notably in
Scotus
Eriugena, a pantheistic
theory of
the soul. All
individual
existence is but
the development of the Divine life, in which all
things are destined to be resumed. The
Arabian
commentators, Averroes
and Avicenna,
had interpreted
Aristotle's
psychology in a
pantheistic sense. St. Thomas, with the
rest of the Schoolmen,
amends this portion of the
Aristotelean
tradition, accepting
the rest with no important modifications. St. Thomas's
doctrine is briefly
as follows:
- the rational soul, which is one with the sensitive and vegetative principle, is the form of the body. This was defined as of faith by the Council of Vienne of 1311;
- the soul is a substance, but an incomplete substance, i.e. it has a natural aptitude and exigency for existence in the body, in conjunction with which it makes up the substantial unity of human nature;
- though connaturally related to the body, it is itself absolutely simple, i.e. of an unextended and spiritual nature. It is not wholly immersed in matter, its higher operations being intrinsically independent of the organism;
- the rational soul is produced by special creation at the moment when the organism is sufficiently developed to receive it. In the first stage of embryonic development, the vital principle has merely vegetative powers; then a sensitive soul comes into being, educed from the evolving potencies of the organism -- later yet, this is replaced by the perfect rational soul, which is essentially immaterial and so postulates a special creative act. Many modern theologians have abandoned this last point of St. Thomas's teaching, and maintain that a fully rational soul is infused into the embryo at the first moment of its existence.
THE SOUL IN MODERN THOUGHT
Modern speculations respecting the soul have taken two
main directions,
Idealism and
Materialism.
Agnosticism need
not be reckoned as a third and distinct answer to the
problem, since, as a matter of fact, all actual
agnosticisms have
an easily recognized
bias towards one or other of the two solutions aforesaid. Both
Idealism and
Materialism
in present-day
philosophy merge
into Monism,
which is probably the most influential
system outside the
Catholic Church.
History
Descartes
conceived the soul as essentially thinking (i.e.
conscious)
substance, and
body as essentially extended
substance. The two
are thus simply disparate realities,
with no vital connection between them. This is significantly marked by his
theory of
the soul's location in the body. Unlike the
Scholastics he
confines it to a single point --
the pineal gland -- from which it is supposed to control the various
organs and muscles
through the medium of the "animal
spirits", a kind of
fluid circulating through the body.
Thus, to say the least, the soul's
biological
functions are made very remote and indirect,
and were in fact later on reduced almost to a nullity: the lower
life was violently
severed
from the higher, and regarded as a simple
mechanism. In the
Cartesian theory
animals
are mere automata. It is only by the Divine assistance that action between
soul and
body is possible. The
Occasionalists went further, denying all interaction whatever,
and making the correspondence of the two sets of facts a pure result of the
action
of God. The
Leibnizian theory
of Pre-established
Harmony
similarly refuses to admit
any inter-causal relation. The superior
monad (soul)
and the aggregate of inferior
monads which go to
make up the body are like two clocks constructed with perfect
art so as always to agree. They register alike, but independently: they are
still two
clocks, not one. This awkward
Dualism was
entirely got rid of by
Spinoza. For him
there is but one,
infinite
substance, of which
thought and
extension are only
attributes. Thought comprehends
extension, and by
that very fact shows that
it is at root one with that which it comprehends. The alleged irreducible
distinction
is transcended: soul and body are neither of them substances,
but each is a
property of the one
substance. Each in
its sphere is the counterpart of the other.
This is the meaning of the definition, "Soul is the
Idea of Body".
Soul is the
counterpart within the sphere of the attribute of thought of that particular
mode of the attribute of
extension which we
call the body. Such was the
fate of
Cartesianism.
English
Idealism had a
different course. Berkeley had begun by denying the
existence
of material
substance, which he reduced merely to a series of
impressions in the sentient
mind.
Mind is the only
substance. Hume
finished
the argument by dissolving
mind itself
into its phenomena, a loose collection
of "impressions and
ideas". The Sensist
school (Condillac etc.) and the
Associationists (Hartley, the Mills, and Bain) continued in similar fashion
to regard the
mind as constituted
by its phenomena or "states", and the
growth of modern positive
psychology has
tended to encourage this attitude.
But to rest in
Phenomenalism as a
theory is impossible, as its ablest
advocates themselves have seen. Thus J.S. Mill, while describing the
mind
as merely "a series [i.e. of
conscious
phenomena] aware of itself as a series",
is forced to admit that such a conception involves an unresolved paradox.
Again, W. James's assertion that "the passing thought is itself the
Thinker",
which "appropriates" all past thoughts in the "stream of
consciousness",
simply blinks the question. For surely there is something which in its turn
"appropriates" the passing thought itself and the entire stream of past and
future thoughts as well, viz. the self-conscious, self-asserting "I" the
substantial
ultimate of our mental
life. To be in this sense "monarch of all it surveys" in
introspective observation and reflective self-consciousness, to appropriate
without itself being appropriated by anything else, to be the genuine owner
of a certain limited section of reality (the stream of
consciousness),
this is to
be a free and sovereign (though finite)
personality, a
self-conscious, spiritual
substance in the
language of Catholic
metaphysics.
Criticism
The foregoing discussion partly anticipates our criticism of
Materialism. The
father of modern
Materialism is Hobbes, who accepted the theory of
Epicurus,
and reduced all
spirits either to
phantoms of the
imagination or to matter in a
highly rarefied state. This theory need not detain us here. Later
Materialism
has three main sources:
- Newtonian
physics, which
taught men to regard matter, not as inert and
passive,
but as instinct with force. Why should not life and consciousness be among its
unexplored potencies? (Priestley, Tyndall, etc.) Tyndall himself provides the
answer admitting that the chasm that separates psychical facts from material
phenomena is "intellectually impassable". Writers, therefore, who make thought a
mere "secretion of the brain" or a "phosphorescence" of its substance
Vogt, Moleschott) may be simply ignored. In reply to the more serious
Materialism, spiritualist philosophers need only re-assert the admissions of the Materialists
themselves, that there is an impassable chasm between the two classes of facts.
- Psychophysics, it is alleged, shows the most minute dependence of
mind-functions
upon brain-states. The two orders of facts are therefore perfectly continuous, and,
though they may be superficially different yet they must be after all radically one.
Mental phenomena may be styled an epiphenomenon or byproduct of material force
(Huxley). The answer is the same as before. There is no analogy for an epiphenomenon
being separated by an "impassable chasm" from the causal series to which it belongs.
The term is, in fact, a mere verbal subterfuge. The only sound principle in such arguments
is the principle that essential or "impassable" distinctions in the effect can be explained
only by similar distinctions in the cause. This is the principle on which Dualism as we
have explained it, rests. Merely to find relations, however close, between mental and
physiological facts does not advance us an inch towards transcending this Dualism.
It only enriches and fills out our concept of it. The mutual compenetration of soul and
body in their activities is just what Catholic philosophy (anticipating positive science)
had taught for centuries. Man is two and one, a divisible but a vital unity.
- Evolutionism endeavours to explain the origin of the
soul from merely material
forces. Spirit is not the basis and principle; rather it is the ultimate efflorescence
of the Cosmos. If we ask then "what was the original basis out of which spirit
and all things arose?" we are told it was the Unknowable (Spencer). This system
must be treated as Materialistic Monism. The answer to it is that, as the outcome
of the Unknowable has a spiritual character, the Unknowable itself (assuming its reality)
must be spiritual.
As regards monistic
systems generally, it belongs rather to
cosmology to
discuss
them. We take our stand on the
consciousness of
individual
personality, which
consciousness is a
distinct deliverance of our very highest faculties, growing
more
and more explicit with the strengthening of our
moral and
intellectual being.
This
consciousness is
emphatic, as against the figments of a fallaciously abstract
reason,
in asserting the self-subsistence (and at the same
time the finitude)
of our being, i.e. it declares that we are independent inasmuch as we
are truly
persons or selves, not mere attributes or adjectives, while at
the same
time,
by exhibiting our manifold limitations, it directs us to a higher
Cause on which
our being depends.
Such is the Catholic
doctrine on the
nature, unity,
substantiality, spirituality,
and origin of the soul. It is the only system consistent with
Christian
faith, and,
we may add, morals,
for both Materialism
and Monism
logically cut away
the
foundations of these. The foregoing historical sketch will have served also
to
show another advantage it possesses -- namely, that it is by far the most
comprehensive, and at the same
time
discriminating, syntheseis of whatever
is best in rival systems. It recognizes the physical
conditions of the
soul's
activity with the
Materialist, and its spiritual aspect with the
Idealist, while
with the
Monist it insists on the vital unity of
human
life. It enshrines
the
principles of ancient
speculation, and is
ready to receive and assimilate the
fruits of modern research.