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. The
lowest savages 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 savage, 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 savage 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 (cf. TRADUCIANISM). Origen
taught the pre-existence of the soul. Terrestrial life is a
punishment and a remedy for pre-natal 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 Materialsim 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

From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc., P.O. Box 281096, Denver, Colorado, USA, 80228.
([email protected]) Taken from the New Advent Web Page
(www.knight.org/advent).

This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
edition on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to
contribute to this worthwhile project, you can contact him by e-
mail at (knight.org/advent). For more information please download
the file cathen.txt/.zip.

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