Philosophy: Soul Essay, Research Paper
The Soul
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 belief of immortality, but it is a sure instinct that leads us to suspect every attack on the actuality 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, will, and essence of the human body. 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. 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. Absolute immortality they denied; relative immortality, terminating with the universal 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.
To each class they ascribed a different origin and destiny. The
spiritual were of the seed 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.
It is probable that originally the terms pneumatici, psychici, and
choici denoted at first 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. Irenaeus 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.
The two converse truths — those of the soul’s affinity with the
Divine nature and its radical 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 Rom., i, 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 Manichaeans 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 (q. v.). 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.
MICHAEL MAHER AND JOSEPH BOLAND
Transcribed by Tomas Hancil and Joseph P. Thomas
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIV
Copyright ? 1912 by Robert Appleton Company
Online Edition Copyright ? 1999 by Kevin Knight
Nihil Obstat, July 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor
Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
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