The Existence and Nature of Man's Soul

a) Meaning of Soul

By soul is meant the principle of life and vital action in a living body. Any bodily thing which is alive, be it plant, beast, or human being, has something which makes it live, something other than its bodily structure in entirety or portion, something whereby it is alive, and in the absence of which it is dead. This something is substantial; it is not a mere quality or accident of the organism; and this substantial something is called soul. True, in our day, the term soul is not ordinarily applied to the lifeprinciple of plant or beast; the term is usually restricted to the human life-principle, which, as we shall see, is spiritual and deathless. In a word, soul usually means the human soul. For interesting reasons which we shall not pause to discuss, the term soul is peculiarly obnoxious to the modern scientistic mind. The word is only a term for a reality, but somehow the term itself, as a term, is hateful to many, even to many who put themselves to considerable mental effort and strain to find a substitute—usually a ponderous and unattractive substitute, like “entelechy,” or “biotic energy,” or “life force,” or “bathmic urge.” There are even biologists and psychologists who put themselves to the bizarre inconvenience of speaking of “the something over,” rather than utter the hateful word “soul.” Perhaps, if one must have an alternative term, “psyche” is as good as any, although its constant use, even by those who pronounce it correctly, is not without a touch of pedantry and priggishness. There is in this peculiar avoidance of the term soul something reminiscent of the thin-lipped brigade which once found the word purgatory wholly detestable, while admitting a sentimental fondness for “a moment of silent recollection and prayer” on behalf of the departed—an observance familiar in the recollection of all who lived through the World War.

b) Existence of the Human Soul

Manifestly, there is something which makes a man live. And man’s life has three departments or classes of functions: vegetal, animal, and specifically human or rational. The questions that concern us here are, therefore, the following: has man a soul which is a substantial reality distinct from his body; and has man three souls or only one ?

1. Man Has a Soul,—Man is alive. There is something, therefore, that makes him live. This is his soul. The soul is something other than the material out of which the body is made, and it is something other than the organic body itself. In other words, life-actions do not stand explained either by bodymass or body-structure.—Matter cannot be the principle or source of life in man, nor in any living creature. If matter were the principle of any life, all bodies would be alive, which is not the case. Further: matter is, in its own nature, passive and inert, and hence cannot be the principle of that which is active as life is active.—Nor can the organism itself (the body-structure) be the principle of man’s life. For the organism lives and functions by reason of the life-principle; the organism is the effect of the lifeprinciple; and an effect is not its own cause. The organism is elaborated, built up, from a primitive cell, in which the life-principle already existed and functioned, and the organism results from the functioning of the life-principle. More: the organism is kept in being and activity by the life-principle, which continually acts to build up and conserve, even after the organism has reached mature growth. Further: when life departs, the organic structure is often left unimpaired; it does not break down entirely until life has gone; and were this structure the well-spring of life, life could not depart while it endured.—The soul of a man is, therefore, neither matter nor the organism itself. It is something other than the material organic structure of the living and functioning body. It is that reality by which the body is constituted as organic, living, functioning. The life-principle of living bodies, and hence of man, is not to be explained in terms of chemistry or physics or mechanical action. For granted that forces of a chemical, physical, and mechanical nature are at work in the living body, the effect produced by their aid is manifestly under the direction and management of some power other than themselves. The chemist and physicist do not even pretend to produce in their laboratories a living leaf or blade of grass or sensitive nerve or muscle. And whenever claims have been made for the existence of a “chemical plant,”

MAN’S SOUL 73 it has always been found that the “growth” of such a body is merely the accretion of matter from without and not the product of a moving and directing power from within. There is no more “growth” in such things than in the increase of a snow-drift or the enlargement, through coalescence, of a mass of crystals. But a living body has a unity and a drive of function that are fostered and furthered by the action and management of an inner power, which we call the soul or the true life-principle. This power called the soul is not merely an accidental or a quality resident in the living body. Rather, the soul is a substantial reality which has and exerts the power of life-activity. The soul is not an accident, like the shape of a body or its temperature or its bulk; it is not an accident at all; it is a substantial thing. For if the soul were merely an accident, its removal would not induce a substantial change in the body whence it is taken. But the removal of the soul does induce such a change. Take away life, and the whole nature of the body changes; its functions are altered; its entire character undergoes a modification and a complete reversal. When alive, the body grows, or, if mature, maintains structure and function; when dead, it does no such thing. When alive, it holds its identity, unified, purposeful in its function; when dead, it submits to dissolution and decay, its parts fall asunder and are absorbed, its functions are no longer exercised. We must conclude that the soul is a substantial reality, and not a mere accidental. To sum up: man, who is a living body, has a soul. The soul is a life-principle distinct from the bodymatter and the body-structure. The soul is a substantial reality, and not a mere mark, characteristic, or quality of the body-structure or body-mass.

2. Man Has Only One Soul.—Every living body has its life-principle or soul. Now, there are three kinds of living bodies, and these are three grades. First, the lowest form of life is that of the plant; it is called vegetal or vegetative life, and its functions are nutrition, growth, and reproduction; that is, it takes food or nourishment from other bodies and changes this into its own substance, it grows to a definite state of maturity and maintains itself therein, and it tends to reproduce or generate its kind.—The second grade of life is called animal or sentient life. This grade of life includes the functions of plant-life and adds to these the specific functions of sentiency, appetition, and locomotion. That is to say, a body with animal life has all the functions of the plant plus: (a) sense-knowledge through one or more senses; that of touch or feeling being fundamental; (d) appetency or the power of responding to sense-knowledge by a tendency towards what is sensibly known as desirable and away from

MAN’S SOUL 75 its opposite; (c) the power of moving, with greater or less readiness, from place to place, thus actualizing the tendency of appetition or appetency.—The third and highest grade of life in bodies is that called rational or human. This grade of life includes the functions of plant and animal and adds the specific functions of intellection and volition, that is, of understanding and free-will. Now, man has all three grades of life. He takes food, grows, propagates, as does the plant. He has senses and bodily appetites and the power of local movement, as has the animal. He has understanding and free-will. The question arises: Has man then three souls, a plant-soul, a sentient soul, and a rational soul? The answer is: No, man has only one soul, and that the rational soul, which is the principle of his threefold life and all his functions, vegetal, sentient, rational. The reason for this assertion may be stated as follows: (a) It is the rational soul which makes the bodily being human, constitutes the human substance by its substantial union with matter. As St. Thomas points out, whatever belongs to a thing over and above its completed substance, belongs accidentally. The human soul, the rational soul, would be merely an accidental if the bodily man were already substantially constituted by the vegetal soul; so, too, the sentient soul would be a mere accidental. But, as we have just said, it is the rational soul which makes man man, constitutes the human substance as human, and not as a mere plant or animal body. Hence the human rational soul is not an accidental, but a substantial thing, substantially united with the material of the body, completely constituting it as human; in philosophical phraseology, the human rational soul is the substantial form of the body. Now, there cannot be in one and the same being a plurality of substantial forms. Consequently, there is no vegetal substantial form or animal substantial form in man; in other words, there is no plant-soul or animal soul in man. There is but one soul, and that rational. Hence, the rational soul possesses, in addition to its own perfections and functions, the perfections and functions of the minor grades of life; and this one soul is, in man, the source or principle of his threefold life-activity, (b) There is such an interdependence of function in man’s threefold life that this life must flow from a single principle. If man had three distinct souls, each would function in its own sphere without let or hindrance from the others; but this is not the case. Bodily disorders (of sentient or vegetal character) upset the thinking mind, and, conversely, a mind that is alert and active has its reaction upon bodily organs and functions. A headache is a sentient experience; but it may come from a vegetal source, such as a disorder in nutrition; and though thinking or reasoning is a rational function, it is hampered by the headache. Man, therefore, has but one life-principle. That this must be the rational

MAN’S SOUL 77 soul is obvious. For vegetal life does not demand sentiency, since we find vegetal life without sentiency in plants. Nor does sentient life require rationality, for we find sentient life without reason in brute animals. But sentiency does require vegetal life, and rationality (in living bodies) does require sentiency. In other words, the higher grade includes the lower, but the lower does not necessarily demand the higher; just as a man on a ladder need not ascend to any higher rung, but must have the elevation of all the rungs below him. Since man has the higher grade of life, since he is substantially a human being, he has the perfections of the lower grades of life. He is substantially what he is by reason of the higher form, not the lower forms; hence his one soul is the rational soul. There is a danger to be avoided here, a danger involved in the analogy of the ladder: it must be remembered that the distinction between the three grades of life is not alone a distinction of degree, but of essential difference. The superiority of sentient life over vegetal life, and of human rational life over both others, is a superiority of essential kind as well as of degree. While man has all three grades of life, he is one being with one rational soul. We might amend the analogy, and consider three ladders in a row, a short one, a slightly longer one, and a very long one. The man who climbs the third ladder to its height has all the elevation afforded by the other two, and some additional height besides. The point we make is that vegetal, sentient, and rational life are not so much three rungs (which differ only in degree of height), but three ladders (differing in kind as well as in degree).

c) The Spirituality of the Human Soul

In its first definition of the term, the unabridged Webster gives us the amazing misinformation that spirit means “life, or the life-principle, conceived as a kind of breath or vapor animating the body, or, in man, mediating between body and soul.” Philosophically, spirit means nothing of the kind. A breath or vapor, however tenuous, is bodily, not spiritual; and, in man, there is no medium whatever to serve as a connecting link between body and soul: soul and body are united in a single substance. By spirit we mean a substantial reality which is not dependent upon matter (i. e., upon bodily being) for its existence or its own proper functions. A spirit is not a “breath or vapor”; a spirit has no bodiliness, no bulk, no dimensions, no parts. Yet a spirit is a substance, a reality fitted to exist itself, and not as a mere inherent quality, modification, mark, or characteristic of some other thing. We assert that the soul is a spirit, and we shall offer evidence for the assertion presently. The soul is a spirit, but it is, in mortal life, united with the body substantially> so that, as a result of the union, a man is a single individual human being. The soul

MAN’S SOUL 79 does not dwell in a man as a bird in a cage or a prisoner in a cell. Nor does the soul flit about the organism as a director, manager, and controller, with some such relation to the body and its organs as that which the pianist has to his instrument and its keyboard, or the motorist to the car and the controls. Soul and body in man are united so as to constitute one human substance. Therefore, we do wrong to conceive the soul as “a kind of breath or vapor.” For the soul is no vaporous image or shadow-man indwelling within the walls of human flesh. Man is not to be defined as a fleshly structure with a spirit enclosed, nor, as Cousin would have it, is he a spirit served by organs. Man is not body; man is not soul; man is soul-and-body, a single, if compound, substance. By an analogy, sufficiently inaccurate, we may illustrate the substantial union of soul and body in a man by comparing it to the union of elements in water. The analogy will be criticized later and its points of failure indicated. But, for the present, consider this: Water is not oxygen; water is not hydrogen; water is not a mere mixture of the two like a mixture of sand and sugar; water is oxygen-andhydrogen, a single, if compound, substance. So the soul and the body of a living man are united in a single, if compound, substance, and the Catechism is scientifically correct when it defines man as “a creature composed [i, e., compounded] of body and soul.” For the function of a substance reveals the character of the substance; “function follows essence,” is an ancient axiom. And the functions of a man, whether of soul or body, are, in each case, the operations of one individual substantial being. One rightly says, “I see; I grow; I feel; I understand; I appreciate; I choose.” One does not say, “My body grows and feels; my soul understands and chooses.” Now, although the soul is thus substantially united with the body in man, it is nevertheless a spirit, and does not depend upon the body for its existence nor for its own proper spiritual functions, granted that in the state of union with the body it takes the occasion and “the materials” for its action from the bodily senses. But the point we stress just now is this: the soul in its union with matter constitutes man as a living, sentient, bodily substance, endowed with understanding and free-will. And, at the same time, the soul remains a spirit, capable of separation from the human body—which it makes a human, as well as an existent body—and of independent existence. Indeed, the soul is not only capable of such separate existence; it actually enters into it when a man dies. The human soul does not lose its identity in its union with the body, as hydrogen and oxygen lose their identity in water. The soul, while substantially united with the body, preserves its own being, its own actuality, as an undivided, undiluted, undimensional spirit. And, at the same time, this spiritual

MAN’S SOUL 81 soul makes the matter with which it is united an existent, living, sentient, human body. Is there mystery here ? Is there mystery in this union, substantial, yet not obliterating the identity of the united elements? Yes, there is mystery, but there is also fact. Mystery is not a synonym for fog. Mystery has nothing to do with vague and shadowy things, but with solid and undeniable realities which we recognize and know as facts, but which we cannot fully explain. If we are going to draw the line at mystery, we may as well “take in our sign,” shut up our mental shop at once, and retire into the dark and eerie madhouse of complete skepticism. You cannot turn on the electric light, or draw a puff from a cigarette, or move hand or foot, or attack the morning grape-fruit, or say “Boo” to a goose or “Bosh” to an atheist, without involving yourself in deep and even desperate mystery. These commonplace things are plain facts of undeniable reality; but try, for once in a way, to carry any one of them the whole distance of adequate explanation. Explain, in last detail, the nature and workings of electricity; explain lung-action, and the precise nature of the pleasure of smoking; explain the almost effortless control of bodily members; present an adequate interpretation of appetite, and exhibit in intelligible terms the subtle appeal of grape-fruit; explain the exclamation and the goose; nay, with heroic resolution, attempt an adequate explanation of the atheist. You will find your task somewhat exhausting. Yet these matters are simple facts, plain and undeniable as the nose on your face! Precisely; for the nose on your face is a mystery. Mysterious as this union of body and soul is, it is nevertheless an undeniable fact. We have seen that the human substance is, in each person, a single substance, though a compound or composed one. We are now to evidence the fact that the spiritual element of this compound substance is a true spirit. Once that is known, it follows inevitably that the spiritual element in man does not lose its identity in composition or compounding with the body; for a spirit has no bulk or extension, no parts or elements, which could be merely mingled and fused with matter in such a way as to absorb the identity of the human elements. In a word, once the spiritual character of the human soul is evidenced, it will be apparent that the substantial union of body and soul in a man is, while admittedly mysterious, an undeniable reality. As we have already noticed, the nature of a thing is evidenced by its function. A reality shows infallibly what it is by the things that it does. “Function follows essence/’ If, therefore, man has operations which are in their nature independent of matter, of bodiliness, and above the reach of merely bodily powers, then it follows of necessity that there is an essential and substantial element in man which is itself independent of matter or bodiliness in its very

MAN’S SOUL 83 being; it follows, in a word, that there is an element in the human substantial compound which is a true spirit. Now, as a fact, man has operations which are in their nature independent of matter or bodiliness and are above the reach of merely bodily powers. Man has understanding and free-will, and in the exercise of understanding the mind is capable of perfectly reflecting upon itself. You cannot explain in terms of physics and chemistry and mechanical action, nor in terms of nerve and muscle, the action by which the mind grasps the essence of a thing. The eye may behold a man or a tree, but the mind knows what a man or a tree is, and not merely the individual men or trees that happen to fall within the reach of the eye. No merely bodily power could do that. Further, the mind knows things that are not bodily, and understands the meaning of such realities as spirit, soul, God, and of such things as beauty, goodness, truth, justice. No bodily power could have a knowing grasp of these realities. More: the mind can make itself and its operations the object of its action, that is to say, the mind can reflect, and this is a function totally removed from the capacity of a material or bodily faculty. For while a bodily being may bend back partially upon itself, overlapping one part with another, it is wholly impossible for such a being to bend back totally upon itself, overlapping itself with itself. Nor can a bodily knowing-power do this. The eye cannot see itself seeing; the ear cannot hear itself hearing. But the mind can and does know itself knowing; it understands that it is understanding; the mind can make itself and its operations the object of its own attention and study. Finally, the nature of a man has in it something that reaches out after realities which wholly exceed the capacity of bodily powers to know and to achieve. Man wants wisdom, knowledge, justice; man proposes to himself ideals to be achieved; man tends towards ultimate and perfect happiness. Therefore, we are fairly compelled to acknowledge that a man is not wholly bodily. There is in him an essential and substantial element which, by its operations of understanding, willing, reflecting, tending towards non-material ideals, shows itself to be truly spiritual. And these spiritual functions are proper to man as man, not to man inasmuch as he is a bodily being with functions like those of brute animals. Those functions which are spiritual, come from a spirit; those functions which are human, come from substantial man. Man, therefore, has, as an essential part of his compound substantial being, a true and undeniable spirit. This we call the human soul. The human soul is, therefore, a spiritual substantial reality.

d) The Immortality of the Human Soul

To say that the human soul is immortal is to say that it cannot die. Immortality means deathlessness. Immortality belongs of absolute necessity to that

MAN’S SOUL 85 Being which must exist, which is infinite and selfsubsistent; that is to say, immortality belongs of necessity, and of indispensable or absolute necessity, to God. We call God’s immortality absolute immortality. But the immortality which reason forces us to ascribe to the human soul is known as natural immortality. That God did not need to create the soul, is a fact which requires no proof: the soul is not something that must have existence; the soul is not necessary being but contingent being. However, given existence, the soul is of such nature that it has no tendency towards dissolution or death; indeed it has no possibility for extinction beyond the possibility that the Power which made it can, speaking absolutely, also destroy it. That the soul is naturally immortal, we evidenced in the present study. We have already seen that the soul is an existent, living, substantial, and spiritual reality. It is a spirit. Now, a spirit has been defined as that which does not depend for existence or function upon matter or bodily being. The fact, therefore, that a spirit leaves a body with which it has been substantially united does not mean the extinction or death of the spirit; on the contrary, in losing the body, the spirit has lost that upon which it did not depend for its being or existence. When a plant or brute animal dies, its lifeprinciple (or “soul”) ceases to be, because, as is quite evident from vegetal and sentient functions, the plant-soul and brute-soul do depend upon the organic body for being and function, and they have no function to exhibit in plant-life and brute-life which is not a matter completely within the scope of bodily life-powers. But the human soul, as we have seen, has functions which are not merely of the body; the human soul does not depend upon the body for its functions and hence does not depend on the body for existence. Therefore, the taking away of the body from the human soul (which happens when a man dies) does not take from the soul itself what it must have to exist and to function. Hence the death of a man does not mean the death of his soul. The soul is a spirit. Now, a spirit has no parts, no bulk, no elements. It is, therefore, indivisible, since divisibility means separation of parts, and the soul has no parts. But a living and substantial reality which has no parts into which it may be broken or divided is deathless; it is naturally immortal. For death is neither more nor less than the breaking up of a living thing into its essential parts. Man dies because his essential parts (body and soul) are sundered, are broken out of their substantial union. But a man’s soul does not die because it has no essential parts which can be sundered. Therefore, the soul, being an indivisible spirit, is immortal by its very nature; that is to say, the soul is naturally immortal. We might supplement this sufficient proof by considering man’s natural desire for an endless happy existence. The suicide who tries to “end it all” does

MAN’S SOUL 87 not really long for extinction, but for release from the troubles of life. He actually proves by his horrible crime the human tendency for lasting peace and happiness. Normal men are quick to admit that the whole drive and tendency of rational human nature is for endless life. Abnormal persons, and such as aspire to notice (a childish phenomenon familiar to all of us) for startling remarks or shocking views, may claim that they wish nothing but extinction. Yet they continue to bear the whips and scorns of time; they are not willing to fly to ills which they know not of; the bare bodkin remains safely sheathed. The very fact that a person lives and bears life’s burdens, is proof sufficient that he holds a deep-seated, though sometimes unconscious, conviction that Plato has reasoned well, and that there is in man a longing after immortality, and a conviction of its reality. If we needed any evidence for the fact that men of all times have held a firm and reasoned conviction of human immortality, we have it in every page of human history. Alone among the animals, man cares for his dead; he erects monuments; he compiles memoirs; he exhibits a religious care for the sorry remains of what was once a living man. Indeed, so general is the conviction of human immortality, not merely as a sentiment, but as a reasoned conviction, that we cannot avoid the impact of a compelling argument, namely, that the voice of rational nature itself proclaims the immortality of the soul. And, if this be so, we are driven to accept the fact or to deny to human thinking all value and validity, and to lapse into skepticism. We have said that the soul has in itself no possibility of extinction beyond the possibility that the Power which made it might also destroy it. In a word, the only way in which the human soul can cease to be is by annihilation. Now, annihilation consists in the withdrawing of the creating and conserving power, the power of God. As God is the only Being that can create, God alone can withdraw the creative power. Hence God alone can annihilate, or reduce to nothingness. But, although annihilation is a possibility, absolutely speaking, it is not a possibility when we take into consideration the perfections of the creating and conserving God. God is infinitely wise; and it would not be wisdom to create a being capable of endless existence merely to destroy it in time. It would not be wise to make a being naturally deathless and at the same time to destine it for death, or, more precisely, for extinction. Again, God is infinitely good; and it would not be consistent with boundless goodness to make a soul which naturally longs for life and happiness and then to stifle this natural tendency in utter extinction. Finally, God is infinitely just; and it would not be a work of boundless justice to allow good men to suffer and wicked men to prosper, as is often the case in this life, and

MAN’S SOUL 89 then to bring both to a common extinction with the scale forever unbalanced. God, therefore, can annihilate the soul, if we consider the possibility as dependent upon His power alone; but He cannot annihilate it, if we consider His absolute perfections of wisdom, goodness, and justice. To put the matter tersely, if less correctly, God can annihilate, but He will not do so. The soul, in itself naturally deathless, will endure deathlessly. The denial of a truth points to consequences which show that the truth is indeed a truth. The denial of immortality in the human soul points to consequences which show that immortality must be a fact. For consider: if this life is all; if there is no future and lasting state; then the part of human wisdom would be to gather rosebuds while life lasts; to trample on decency, on ennobling love, on the rights of others; to follow every low lust and passion; to “get out of life” every sorry drop of pleasure. And if all men were to pursue such a course, chaos would result; states and governments would perish; the earth would be a shambles. “By their fruits ye shall know them” is a test of doctrines as of doctrinaires. And by the fruits, logically foreseen, of a general denial of immortality, we know that such denial must be wrong. Nor will it do to say that the soul will have a future state of reward or punishment, but that eventually, after its temporary heaven or hell, the soul will be annihilated. On the one hand, nothing short of endless existence will answer the normal tendency and desire of the human spirit; and, on the other, nothing short of eternity will square with the requirements of the perfections of the Creator and Preserver of men. Nothing but endless happiness or woe gives what Father Ronald Knox calls “the background of finality” to human hopes and aspirations. Nor would a merely temporary existence after death suffice to hold weak wills in line with virtue here on earth; the evils which would come of a denial of the future state would infallibly come of a denial of its endlessness. Reason forces us to the conclusion—massing arguments from all sides—that the human soul is immortal.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have studied the meaning of soul, and, in particular, of the human soul. We have proved that the human soul exists, and that it is in man the principle of his threefold life, vegetal, sentient, rational. We have seen that a man has only one soul, even though it be multiple in its functions. We have studied the nature of the union of body and soul in man, and have seen that this is a substantial, and not a merely accidental union. We have studied the meaning of spirit and have discovered that the human soul is demonstrably a true