This doctrine is maintained by Father Bödder, Psychologia Rationalis, pp. 356-362, ed. 2, who mentions other Catholics as opposing it. Their grounds may be something as follows: -- The doctrine was formulated in an age when cell-life, protoplasm, blood corpuscles, microbes, were undreamt of. If there is any value in the well-worn analogy between the constitution of man and that of a State, the State, it may be observed, contains many minor associations, which it does not absorb or transform into things political, but is content merely to co-ordinate, guard, and set bounds to. We now recognise both molar and molecular mechanics: is there not also such a thing as molecular life, with principles or 'forms' of its own, besides the molar life of the mass of the body as such? Otherwise how could there ever be such a thing as a fever or a morbid growth in the body? Are not these abnormal developments exaggerations, we might almost say 'rebellions,' of secondary lives with which in its ordinary state the body is replete, -- secondary lives which in health work in harmony with the main life, of which the soul is the principle?

Of God and His Creatures: 2.56