ART. I. -- ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL.
87. The human soul comes immediately from God by creation. -- A produced substance is either drawn from nothing by creation, as in the case of the first man and of all substances at the beginning of the world; or it comes from another substance by substantial change, as in non-living beings, when, for instance, wood is converted into ashes, then into clay; or it comes from a like substance by generation, as in living beings, such as the plant, which comes from a like plant. Some both of the old and of the more recent philosophers, to explain more easily the transmission of original sin, taught that the human soul is produced by generation. But this by no means explains the transmission of original guilt, for, if this opinion were admitted, we would have to conclude that every man inherited likewise by transmission the sins of all his ancestors. Again, this opinion is evidently false; for the soul being independent of matter, cannot come from the body, which is material. Nor can it come from another soul, because the soul is indivisible and therefore incapable of communicating a part of itself. It is evident, therefore, that the soul of each man comes from God immediately by creation.
ART. II. -- SPIRITUALITY OF THE HUMAN SOUL.
88. The soul of man is not only simple and indivisible, like that of plants and brutes, but it is also spiritual; that is, it is in itself independent of matter and can subsist apart from the body. -- The spirituality of the soul, that is, its intrinsic independence of matter and its power of subsisting apart from the body, is demonstrated by its specific operations, which are intellection and volition. The operation of a being is according to the nature of the being itself. Now, a faculty that depends on a material organ for its exercise, can attain to that only which impresses this organ, and is, therefore, concrete and material. But intellect and will may attain to the abstract and immaterial; therefore the soul itself must also be independent of matter. Another argument is furnished by experience. For the organs of the sensitive faculties are impaired by impressions that are too lively or too prolonged, and their alteration involves that of the corresponding faculties; but the intellect and the will become more perfect as the truth is better known and the good more loved, In the second place, the very nature of intellective acts proves their independence of all material organs. For our ideas and their corresponding appetitions are universal, and independent of time and place; and the intellect and the will have a sort of infinity in virtue of which they are always capable of knowing and loving yet more; but if the intellective faculties were exercised in concurrence with organs, they would be limited and determined in their power and their acts by the organs themselves, which by their nature are always limited.{1}
89. Materialism is refuted as absurd in its methods, its princtples, and its consequences. -- The spirituality of the soul is an evident truth universally recognized. Many philosophers have, indeed, attempted to defend the cause of materialism, but it is only to the practical consequences that flow from it they have gained disciples. Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius were the principal supporters of materialism in ancient times. Bacon, Locke, and Condillac have favored it by their doctrines, and it has been professed with all its consequences by several philosophers, as Hobbes (1588-1679), d' Holbach (1723-1789), Helvetius (1715-1771), Lamettrie (1709-1751); by several physiologists, as Bichat (1771-1802), Cabanis (1757-1808), Broussais (1772-1838); and in our own day materialism finds many adepts in the schools of philosophy and medicine.
This error, already refuted indirectly by the arguments that prove the simplicity of the brute soul, and especially by the argument that demonstrates the spirituality of the human soul, is also refuted directly by showing the falsity of its method and its principles. For materialists pretend that experience alone is sufficient to build up the structure of science, and that nothing should be admitted that does not rest on observation. But, on the one hand, experience, as has been seen in Methodology,{2} is insufficient to constitute science; on the other hand, materialists contradict themselves when they assert a priori that man has only sensations. They know very well that if they observed the human soul faithfully, they would find acts that are by no means reducible to sensations.
The absurdity of materialism is further revealed by the falsity of its principles. They may be reduced to three: (1) That it is possible for matter to think; (2) that the development of thought corresponds to that of the organs; (3) that there is an analogy between the organism and the acts of man, and the organism and acts of the brute. The capability of matter to think, although admitted by Locke, cannot be sustained, because contrary properties cannot exist in the same subject. Thought, in its indivisible unity, embraces the whole, object; but if thought were a property of matter, it would follow that the material thinking subject, because extended and composed of many parts, would with each part think either a portion of the object or the whole object. In the former case, there would no longer be any unity in the thought; in the latter case, there would be as mmy whole thoughts as there are parts in the matter, which is absurd. It is of no avail to urge with Locke that it is possible for God to endow matter with the faculty of thinking, although this faculty is distinct from the properties of matter; for, if God were to give matter the power of thinking without making this a property of matter, this faculty would then necessarily exist in an intelligent substance that is distinct from matter and independent of it.
The refutation of Locke's hypothesis avails also against the theory of those physiologists who pretend that all the intellective acts of man are nothing but a secretion of the brain. In support of this absurdity they appeal to the evidence of experience which, it is true, attests how much the state and development of the organism affect also the development of the intellect. But they are greatly in error; for (1) Many facts prove that there is not a constant dependence between the state of the organism and that of the intellect; (2) Even if this dependence were admitted, we cannot conclude the identity of the organism and the intellect any more than we can infer an identity of the musician with the instrument on which he depends for his art; (3) The influence of the organism on the intellect is easily explained by the union of the soul and body, and by the need which the intellect has of sensible images for the matter of its operations.
The analogy between man and brute cannot furnish an argument to the materialist who denies even the simplicity of the soul, since, as has been shown, the soul of the animal is also simple and indivisible. Besides, this analogy does not really exist. Physiologists agree in recognizing in the organism of man specific characters proper to him alone, and experience proves that the brute has not freedom, and if at times it acts in a marvellous way, it is still incapable of progress and of invention, which are properties of man's intellect.
Lastly, materialism is again refuted by its consequences; for, if there be nothing but matter, there is no longer any God, any liberty, any moral law, any eternal life; there remain only the fatal laws of matter. But such consequences are rejected by the good sense and moral conscience of all men, for in all times they have had a horror of materialism in its doctrines and its consequences.
ART. III. -- IMMORTALITY OF THE HUMAN SOUL.
90. The spirituality of the human soul implies also its immortality. -- 1. The spitituality of the human soul requires that it subsist in itself independent of the body; hence the dissolution of the body does not entail that of the soul, which is therefore extrinsically (per accidens) incorruptible. It is true that in this life the soul stands in need of the sensitive faculties, for they supply it with matter for its operations; but when once the bond which unites it to the body has been broken, it possesses the existence proper to separate forms and operates with the intellect alone. 2. Nor is the soul of man intrinsically corruptible, for not being composed of parts, it is simple and contains in itself no germ of dissolution. It is idle to object to the incorruptibility of the soul the fact that God who has made it from nothing can also annihilate it. This is merely an absolute possibility, which will never be reduced to act. God does not contradict Himself, and, as creator of all things, He does not deprive them of what their nature demands. It was possible for Him not to have created the soul; but having created it with an immortal and incorruptible nature, He cannot consistently with His infinite perfection annihilate it, and, so to say, by an act of His power destroy the work of His wisdom.
91. The immortality of the soul is also proved: (1) By its inborn desire of happiness; (2) by its desire of perpetuating its memory; (3) by the idea which we have of vice and virtue; (4) by the unanimous consent of all nations. -- The end of man is happiness, and happiness without limit; hence his desire of happiness is inborn and necessary. Since this desire is natural to man, it has been given him by the Author of nature. But man cannot find here below the happiness that he desires; we must therefore conclude that he will find this happiness in an immortal life, unless we wish to say that God deceives man, that He proposes to him an end impossible to attain, and that while all other creatures reach their end, man cannot arrive at his. Secondly, all men, not excepting those that reject the doctrine of immortality, wish to perpetuate their memory. But this desire would be inexplicable without a consciousness of our immortality; for who would desire to live in the memory of others if he will himself be a mere nothing? Thirdly, we are all persuaded that virtue merits a reward, and vice a punishment. But, in this life, the just man is often persecuted, while the wicked man triumphs; there must, therefore, be another life where the moral order is reestablished. Undoubtedly, peace of conscience is even now a reward of virtue, and remorse a punishment of vice; but, besides the fact that the virtuous man is often troubled in soul, and the wicked man succeeds in stifling all remorse, it is certain that this peace and this remorse have no other foundation than faith in the immortality of the soul. Lastly, the unanimous belief of the human race at all times in the immortality of the soul confirms all the proofs that have been given. The traditions of all nations, and in particular the honor paid to their dead, manifest this belief, which, besides, has been held not only by the vulgar, but even by the greatest geniuses of mankind.{3}
92. The two principal errors regarding the immortality of the soul are palingenesis and metempsychosis. -- Pantheistic philosophers, whether of ancient or modern times, regard the soul as a part of God's substance, and hold that it is immortal, because, on the dissolution of the body, it loses its personality and identifies its life with that of God. This error is called palingenesis. Other pantheistic philosophers, considering the soul as too imperfect to be identified immediately with God, have not hesitated to declare that after this life it passes through a series of transformations and probations, migrating from one body to another until it is sufficiently perfect to be identified with God. This is the error of metempsychosis, taught of old by Pythagoras and in our own days by J. Reynaud.
93. The absurdity of palingenesis appears from the two principles on which it is based, viz., that the human soul is part of the divine substance, and that to obtain immortality it must lose its personality. -- It is absurd to affirm that the substance of God and the substance of man are identical, because, in that case, the divine attributes also should pertain to man, thus identifying the absolute and necessary with the contingent. On the other hand, man is a person, and the immortality of his soul springs from his personality; otherwise we would accept the doctrine of palingenesis. If his personality is destroyed, his immortality is also destroyed.
94. The doctrine of metempsychosis ignores the substantial union of soul and body; it renders expiation impossible; it cannot harmonize with the true idea of immortality. -- In the hypothesis of metempsychosis the soul is united to the body for the sole purpose of expiating the faults of a previous existence; therefore its union with the body is contrary to its nature. But this is refuted both by reason and experience. Again, this hypothesis pretends to explain the miseries of this life by representing the soul as united to the body solely to expiate the faults of a previous life. But to make atonement one must be conscious of the evil for which he is atoning; now it is evident that no one remembers having sinned in a previous life; under these conditions, therefore, no expiation is possible. Lastly, as this series of atonements must have an end, the soul will either survive or not survive its last body. In the latter case, it has no immortality; in the former, we ask why it could not have made atonement in its first body.
{1} According to the tenets of evolutionism, the spirituality of the human soul is an impossibility. "The real initiators of this system were Lamarck (1744-1829), who was the most profound, Goethe the boldest, and Darwin the most ingenious and popular." They teach that in the beginning there were but one or two types, "possessed of marvellous creative energies," and tending to develop into a higher state. In his Philosophie Zoologique, which appeared in 1809, just fifty years before Darwin's Origin of Species, Lamarck adopts three conditions as factors of evolution, -- adaptation, heredity, and time. Darwin accepts the same principles, but gives them a more scientific form. Observing the variations attested in the history of cultivated plants and domestic animals, he compiled his laws of adaptation, correlation, growth, divergence of characteristics, etc. As a second element he places the struggle for life, which is most violent among the species most closely related, whereas the most opposite varieties have the best chance to live and tend to depart more and more from the common type. Holding that the vegetable and the animal kingdom increase in geometrical progression, while their means of subsistence increase in arithmetical progression, he concludes that only the best and strongest individuals survive and are perpetuated by natural selection, the marvellous results of which are preserved to future generations by heredity. Lastly, time is an essential condition.
But this theory is metaphysically impossible. For, says St. Thomas (Sum. Th. i., q. 118, a. 2 ad 2), "No substantial form receives either more or less, but the superaddition of a greater perfection constitutes another species, just as the addition of unity makes another species in number. But it is impossible that a form numerically one and the same should belong to diverse species." It is also contradictory in its process. External circumstances, says Lamarck, produce wants, wants create desires, desires generate corresponding faculties: and these in turn develop a suitable organism. Now, in the words of Cardinal Zigliara (Psychologia, 10, iv.), "That circumstances may produce wants, desires, etc., they must affect a subject capable in itself of such wants and desires, that is, a subject which either experiences all these things or is in potentiality to experience them; therefore our adversaries tacitly but necessarily suppose a vital subject in all these circumstances."
Although a general view of the earth's history seems to favor Darwinism, yet an analytical and searching study of each epoch tends to remove this impression. Thus, in geology, the more perfect forms of animal organism, as the trilobite, are found among the primitive fauna, and are preceded by no transitional forms; among the secondary fauna appear the cephalopods. Again, the physiologist asks, Why is it that species of diverse structure exist in the same surroundings? "How could a fish sustain the struggle for life, or even live, during the slow and gradual transformation of branchial respiration into pulmonary, since at that time and for long generations it was neither aquatic, nor terrestrial, nor amphibious?" Again, the supporters of evolutionism "have practically ignored the formal and efficient causes by which, according to a different order of causality, each nature is essentially constituted, and have based their theories exclusively on the material cause." They seem "wedded to the strange hypothesis that the organism constitutes the Form (the species), rather than that the Form constitutes the organism. . . - They do not account for life. They begin with organism but organism connotes life. . . . If matter evolves itself spontaneously into life without the aid of formal or efficient cause, why have not the metamorphic rocks through all these eons of time shaken off the incubus of their primitive passivity, and wakened up into protoplasm, and thus secured to themselves the privilege of self-motion, internal growth, reproduction?" -- Metaphysics of the School, vol. ii., p. 747.
See also Apologie Scientifique de la Foi Chrétienne, by Canon F. Duilhé de Saint-Projet, pp. 264-308.
{2} See page 66.
{3} Still it must be granted that not all Catholics admit that the arguments of pure reason adduced to prove the soul's immortality are conclusive. They say that for this effect you must first establish the evidence of faith, which teaches that the soul is truly immortal; the other arguments they regard as merely confirmatory of the teaching of faith. With these men may he named the illustrious Alfonso Muzzarelli, the friend of Pius VII., and F. Casto Ansaldi, the eminent Dominican. Even Cajetan and Suarez will not pronounce the demonstration of St. Thomas to he rigorously conclusive. -- See Immortality of the Soul, by Mousignor Corcoran, American Catholic Quarterly Review, vol. ii., p. 847.