Of God and His CreaturesEvolutionists say just the contrary, one great difference between them and the scholastics. The position is saved by the consideration that any evolution must be the ordinance of an all-perfect Mind.
The Platonists and Origenists, St Thomas's opponents in this now effete controversy about the pre-existence of souls, would not have allowed that the soul was the form of the body, or was imperect without the body, or better for union with it. Rather they held that for spirit to be united with flesh was to the spirit encumbrance and punishment. Even Catholics, who confess the soul to be the form of the body, may still linger over Plato's words: "Union between soul and body is nowise better than separation" (Laws, VIII, 821), such union, that is, as obtains in this mortal life (I Cor. xv, 42-50). We do not suppose pre-existence of souls, a theory which, as St Thomas justly argues, would make humanity begin in the degradation of its nobler component: but we may suppose death to be naturally a deliverance, an elevation rather than an impairing of the disembodied spirit. Such a conception of course affects the value of any a priori natural arguement for resurrection (B. IV, Chap LXXIX).