Chapter II: The Origin of the Human Soul (1)

§ 1. Matter and Spirit

We live in an age in which scientific specialization is stressed as the most important means of advancing the interests of human knowledge; and specialism, by reason of its many triumphs, seems to have deserved, in large measure, the prestige which it now enjoys. It has, however, the distinct disadvantage of fostering provincialism and separatism. This lopsided learning of the single track mind is a condition that verges on paranoia, leads to naïve contempt for all knowledge not reducible to its own set of formulæ, and portends, in the near future, a Babel-like confusion of tongues. In fact, the need of a corrective is beginning to be felt in many quarters. This corrective can be none other than the general and synthetic science of philosophy; it is philosophy alone that can furnish a common ground and break down the barriers of exclusiveness which immure the special sciences within the minds of experts.

Scientists readily admit the advantage of philosophy in theory, but in practice their approval is far from being unqualified. A subservient philosophy, which accepts without hesitation all the current dogmas of contemporary science, is one thing, and a critical philosophy venturing to apply the canons of logic to so-called scientific proof is quite another. Philosophy of the latter type is promptly informed that it has no right to any opinion whatever, and that only the scientific specialist is qualified to speak on such subjects. But the disqualification, which is supposed to arise from lack of special knowledge, is just as promptly forgotten, when there is question of philosophy in the rôle of a pliant sycophant, and the works of a Wells or a van Loon are lauded to the skies, despite the glaring examples of scientific inaccuracy and ignorance, in which they abound.

This partiality is sometimes carried to a degree that makes it perfectly preposterous. Thus it is by no means an infrequent thing to find scientists dismissing, as unworthy of a hearing, a philosopher like Hans Driesch, who spent the major portion of his life in biological research, and combined the technical discipline of a scientist with the mental discipline of a logician. The chemist, H. E. Armstrong, for instance, sees in the mere label “philosopher” a sufficient reason for barring his testimony. “Philosophers,” jeers the chemist, with flippant irrelevance, “must go to school and study in the purlieus of experimental science, if they desire to speak with authority on these matters.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1912, p. 528.) Such is his comment on Driesch, yet Driesch did nothing at all, if he did not do far more than Armstrong prescribes as a prerequisite for authoritative speaking. In James Harvey Robinson, on the contrary, we have an example of the tendency of scientists to coddle philosophers who assume a docile, deferential, and submissive attitude towards every generalization propounded in the name of natural science. In sheer gratitude for his uncritical acquiescence, his incapacitation as a nonspecialist is considerately overlooked, and he can confess, without the slightest danger of discrediting his own utterances: “I am not ... a biologist or palæontologist. But I have had the privilege of consorting familiarly with some of the very best representatives of those who have devoted their lives to the patient study of the matters involved in this controversy. I think I quite understand their attitude.” (_Harper’s Magazine,_ June, 1922, p. 68.) By his own testimony he is a scientific amateur, but this does not, in the least, prevent him from “speaking with authority” or from being lionized in scientific circles as an evolutionary “defender of the faith.” Clearly, it is the nature of their respective views, and not the possession or absence of technical knowledge, which makes Robinson a favorite, and Driesch a _persona non grata_, with “the very best representatives” of contemporary science. “Science,” says a writer in the _Atlantic Monthly_ (Oct., 1915), “has turned all philosophy out of doors except that which clings to its skirts; it has thrown contempt on all learning that does not depend upon it; and it has bribed the sketches by giving us immense material comforts.”

Here, however, we are concerned with the fact, rather than the justice, of this discrimination which the scientific world makes between philosopher and philosopher. Certain it is that Robinson has received no end of encomiums from scientists, who apparently lack the literary gifts to expound their own philosophy, and that his claim to represent the views of a large and influential section of the scientific world is, in all probability, entirely correct. It is this manifest approval of scientific men which lends especial interest to the remarks of this scientific dilettante, and we shall quote them as expressing the prevalent scientific view on the origin of man, a view which, with but slight variations, has persisted from the time of Darwin down to the present day.

“The recognition,” says Robinson, “that mankind is a species of animal, is, like other important discoveries, illuminating.” (_Science_, July 28, 1922, p. 74.) To refer to the recognition of man’s animality as a _discovery_ is a conceit too stupid for mere words to castigate. Surely, there was no need of the profound research or delicate precision of modern science to detect the all too obvious similarity existing between man and beast. Mankind did not have to await the advent of an “enlightened” nineteenth, or twentieth century to be assured of the truth of a commonplace so trite and palpable. Even the “benighted” scholastics of medieval infamy had wit enough to define man as a rational animal. Indeed, it would be a libel on human intelligence to suppose that anyone, in the whole history of human thought, was ever sufficiently fatuous to dispute the patent fact that man is a sentient organism compounded of flesh, blood, bone, and sinew like the brute. The “discovery” that man is a species of animal dates from the year one of human existence, and it is now high time for the novelty of this discovery to be worn off.

Even as a difficulty against human superiority and immortality, the “recognition” is by no means recent. We find it squarely faced in a book of the Old Testament, the entire book being devoted to the solution of the difficulty in question. “I said in my heart concerning the estate of the sons of men ... that they might see they are themselves beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that man hath no preeminence above a beast; for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all return to dust. Who knoweth the spirit of man whether it goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast whether it goeth downward to the earth?” (_Ecclesiastes_, III: 18-21.) The sacred writer insists that, so far as the body is concerned, man and the brute stand on the same level; but what of the human soul? Is it, he asks, resolvable into matter like the soul of a beast, or is it a supermaterial principle destined, not for time, but for eternity? At the close of the book, the conclusion is reached that the latter alternative is the true solution of the riddle of human nature—“the dust returneth to the earth whence it was, and the spirit returneth to God who gave it.” (Ch. XII, v. 7.)

Centuries, therefore, before the Christian era, this problem was formulated by Ecclesiastes, the Jew, and also, as we shall presently see, by Aristotle, the coryphæus of Greek philosophy. Nay, from time immemorial man, contrasting his aspirations after immortality with the spectacle of corporal death, has appreciated to the full the significance of his own animality. Never was there question of whether man is, or is not, just as thoroughly an animal as any beast, but rather of whether, his animal nature being unhesitatingly conceded, we are not, none the less, forced to recognize in him, over and above this, the existence of a spiritual mind or soul, differentiating him from the brute and constituting him a being unique, despite the unmistakable homologies discernible between bestial organisms and the human body. Everywhere and always mankind as a whole have manifested, by the universal and uniquely human practice of burying the dead, their unswerving and indomitable conviction that man is spirit as well as flesh, an animal, indeed, yet animated by something not present in the animal, namely, a spiritual soul, deathless and indestructible, capable of surviving the decay of the organism and of persisting throughout eternity.

But, if the human mind or soul is spiritual, it is clear that it cannot be a product of organic evolution, any more than it can be a product of parental generation. On the contrary, each and every human soul must be an immediate creation of the Author of Nature, not evolved from the internal potentiality of matter, but infused into matter from without. The human soul is created in organized matter, but not from it. Nor can the Divine action, in this case, be regarded as a supernatural interposition; for it supplements, rather than supersedes, the natural process of reproduction; and, since it is not in matter to produce spirit, a creative act is demanded by the very nature of things.

Evolution is nothing more nor less than a transmutation of matter, and a transmutation of matter cannot terminate in the annihilation of matter and the constitution of non-matter or spirit. If nothing of the _terminus a quo_ persists in the final product, we have substitution, and not transmutation. The evolution of matter, therefore, cannot progress to a point where all materiality is eliminated. Hence, whatever proceeds from matter, either as an emanation or an action, will, of necessity, be material. It should be noted, however, that by material we do not mean corporeal; for material denotes not merely matter itself, but everything that intrinsically depends on matter. The term, therefore, is wider in its sense than corporeal, because it comprises, besides matter, all the properties, energies, and activities of matter. Hence whatever is incapable of existence and activity apart from matter (whether ponderable or imponderable) belongs to the material, as distinguished from the spiritual, order of things. The soul of a brute, for example, is not matter, but it is material, nevertheless, because it is totally dependent on the matter of the organism, apart from which it has neither existence nor activity of its own.

In the constitution of the sentient or animal soul, matter reaches the _culmination of its passive evolution_. True, its inherent physicochemical forces do not suffice to bring about this consummation, wherewith its internal potentiality is exhausted. Nevertheless, the emergence of an animal soul from matter is conceivable, given an agency competent to educe it from the intrinsic potentiality of matter; for, in the last analysis, the animal soul is simply an internal modification of matter itself. But, if spirit is that which exists, or is, at least, capable of existence, apart from matter, it goes without saying that spirit is neither _derivable_ from, nor _resolvable_ into, matter of any kind. Consequently, it cannot be evolved from matter, but must be produced in matter by creation (_i.e._ total production). _To make the human mind or soul a product of evolution is equivalent to a denial of its spirituality_, because it implies that the human soul like that of the brute, is inherent in the potentiality of matter, and is therefore a purely material principle, totally dependent on the matter, of which it is a perfection. Between such a soul and the sentient principle present in the beast, there would be no essential difference of kind, but only an accidental difference of degree; and this is precisely what Darwin and his successors have spared no effort to demonstrate. James Harvey Robinson is refreshingly frank on this subject, and we will therefore let him be spokesman for those who are more reticent:

“It is the extraordinarily illuminating discovery (_sic_) of man’s animalhood rather than evolution in general that troubles the routine mind. Many are willing to admit that it looks as if life had developed on the earth slowly, in successive stages; this they can regard as a merely curious fact and of no great moment if only man can be defended as an honorable exception. The fact that we have an animal body may also be conceded, but surely man must have a soul and a mind altogether distinct and unique from the very beginning bestowed on him by the Creator and setting him off an immeasurable distance from any mere animal. But whatever may be the religious and poetic significance of this compromise it is becoming less and less tenable as a scientific and historic truth. The _facts_ indicate that man’s _mind_ is quite as clearly of animal extraction as his body.” (_Science_, July 28, 1922, p. 95—italics his.)

This language has, at least, the merit of being unambiguous, and leaves us in no uncertainty as to where the writer stands. It discloses, likewise, the animus which motivates his peculiar interest in transformistic theories. If evolution were incapable of being exploited in behalf of materialistic philosophy, Mr. Robinson, we may be sure, would soon lose interest in the theory, and would once more align himself with the company, which he has so inappropriately deserted, namely, “the routine minds” that regard evolution “as a merely curious fact of no great moment.” Be that as it may, his final appeal is to the “facts,” and it is to the facts, accordingly, that we shall go; but they will not be the irrelevant “facts” of anatomy, physiology, and palæontology. Sciences such as these confine their attention to the external manifestations of human life, and can tell us nothing of man’s inner consciousness. It does not, therefore, devolve upon them to pronounce final judgment upon the origin of _man_. For that which is the distinguishing characteristic of man is not his animal nature, that he shares in common with the brute, but his rational nature, which alone differentiates him from “a beast that wants discourse of reason.” We cannot settle the question as to whether or not man’s _mind_ is “of animal extraction” by comparing his _body_ with the bodies of irrational vertebrates. To institute the requisite comparison between the rational mentality of man and the purely sentient consciousness of irrational animals falls within the exclusive competence of psychology, which studies the internal manifestations of life as they are presented to the intuition of consciousness, rather than biology, which studies life according to such of its manifestations as are perceptible to the external senses. Hence it is within the domain of psychology alone, that man can be studied on his distinctively human, or rational, side, and it is to this science, accordingly, that we must turn in our search for facts that are germane to the problem of the origin of man and the genesis of the human mind. How little, indeed, does he know of human nature, whose knowledge of it is confined to man’s insignificant anatomy and biology, and who knows nothing of the triumphs of human genius in literature, art, science, architecture, music, and a thousand other fields! Psychology alone can evaluate these marvels, and no other science can be of like assistance in solving the problem of whether man is, or is not, unique among all his fellows of the animal kingdom.

§ 2. The Science of the Soul

As a distinct science, psychology owes its origin to Aristotle, whose “_Peri Psyches_” is, in all probability, the first formal treatise on the subject. Through his father, Nichomachus, who was court physician to Philip of Macedon, he became acquainted, at an early age, with biological lore in the form of such medical botany, anatomy, and physiology as were commonly known in prescientific days. Subsequently, his celebrated pupil, Alexander the Great, placed at his disposal a vast library, together with extensive opportunities for biological research. This enabled the philosopher to criticize and summarize the observations and speculations of his predecessors in the field, and to improve upon them by means of personal reflection and research. In writing his psychology, he was naturally forced to proceed on the basis of the facts discoverable by internal experience (introspection) and unaided external observation. Of such facts as are only accessible by means of instrumentation and systematic experimentation, he could, of course, know nothing, since their exploration awaited the advent of modern mechanical and optical inventions. But the factual foundation of his treatise, though not extensive, was solid, so far as it went, and his selection, analysis, and evaluation of the materials at hand was so accurate and judicious, that the broad outlines of his system have been vindicated by the test of time, and all the results of modern experimental research fit, with surprising facility, into the framework of his generalizations, revision being nowhere necessary save in nonessentials and minor details. Wilhelm Wundt, the Father of Experimental Psychology, pays him the following tribute: “The results of my labors do not square with the materialistic hypothesis, nor do they with the dualism of Plato or Descartes. It is only the animism of Aristotle which, by combining psychology with biology, results as a plausible metaphysical conclusion from Experimental Psychology.” (“Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie,” 4te Auflage, II, C. 23, S. 633.)

Literally translated, the title of Aristotle’s work signifies a _treatise concerning the soul_. It set a precedent for the scholastic doctors of the thirteenth century, and _de anima_ became with them a technical designation for all works dealing with this theme. In the sixteenth century the selfsame usage was embalmed in the Greek term psychology, which was coined with a view to rendering the elliptic Latin title by means of a single word. Melanchthon is credited with having originated the term, which, in its original use as well as its etymology, denoted a science of the _psyche_ or soul.

Towards the close of the seventeenth century, however, the meaning of the term in question began to undergo a marvelous evolution, of which the end is not yet. The process was initiated by Descartes, under whose auspices psychology was changed from a science of the _soul_ into a science of the _mind_. Then, under the influence of Hume and Kant, the _noumenal mind_ disappeared, leaving only _phenomenal consciousness_. Recently, with the advent of Watson, even consciousness itself has been discarded and psychology has become a science of _behavior_. And here, for the time being, at any rate, the process has come to a stop, just one step short of complete nihilism. Woodworth quotes the following waggish comment: “First psychology lost its soul, then it lost its mind, then it lost consciousness; it still has behavior of a kind.” (“Psychology, the Science of Mental Life,” p. 2, footnote.) This gradual degeneration of psychology from animism into behaviorism is one of the greatest ironies in the history of human thought. All of this, however, was latent in the corrosive Cartesian principle of “scientific doubt.” _Facilis descensus Averni!_ It is easy to question the validity of this or that kind of human knowledge, but difficult to arrest, or even foresee, the consequences which the remorseless logic of scepticism portends.

Disintegration set in, as has been said, when Descartes substituted his _psychophysical dualism_ of _mind_ and _matter_ for Aristotle’s _hylomorphic dualism_ of _soul_ and _body_. The French philosopher, in an appendix to his “Meditations,” which dates from 1670, expressly rejects the Aristotelian term of soul or _psyche_, and announces his preference for mind or spirit, in the following words: “The substance in which thought immediately resides is here called mind (mens, esprit). I here speak, however, of mens (mind) rather than anima (soul), for the latter is equivocal, being frequently applied to denote what is material” (“Reply to the Second Objections,” p. 86). Henceforth psychology ceased to be a science of the soul, and became, instead, a science of the mind.

Descartes, one must bear in mind, divided the universe into two great realms of being, namely: the conscious and the unconscious, the _psychic_ world of mind and the _physical_ world of matter, unextended substance which thinks and extended substance which moves. In man these two substantial principles were conceived as being united by the tenuous link of mere contact, the spirit or mind remaining separate from, and unmingled with, its material partner, the body. The main trouble with this dualism is that it draws the line of demarcation at the wrong place. Reason and sense-consciousness are bracketed together above the line as being equally spiritual; physiological processes and processes purely physicochemical are coupled below the line as being equally mechanical. Now, when a brain-function such as sense-perception is introduced, like another Trojan Horse, into the citadel of spiritualism, it is a comparatively easy task for materialism to storm and sack that citadel by demonstrating with a thousand neuro-physiological facts that all sensory functions are rigidly correlated with neurological processes, that they are, in short, functions of the nervous system, and therefore purely material in nature. On the other hand, once we retreat from the trench of distinction between the processes of unconscious or vegetative life and the physicochemical processes of the inorganic world, that moment we have lost the strategic position in the conflict with mechanism, and nothing avails to stay its triumphant onrush. Hence, from first to last, it is perfectly clear that the treacherous psychophysical dualism of Descartes has done far more harm to the cause of spiritualism than all the assaults of materialism. There is a Latin maxim which says: _Extrema sese tangunt_—“Extremes come in contact with each other.” The ultraspiritualism of Descartes by confounding spiritual, with organic consciousness, leads by the most direct route to the opposite extreme of crass materialism.

Aristotle’s dualism of matter and form, which is but a physical application of his transcendental dualism of potency (_dynamis_) and act (_entelechy_), is very different from the Cartesian dualism of the physical and the psychic. According to the Aristotelian view, as we have seen in the last chapter, all the physical entities or substantial units of nature (both living and inorganic) are fundamentally _dual_ in their essence, each consisting of a definitive principle called entelechy and a plastic principle called matter. Entelechy is the integrating determinant, the source of the unit’s coherence and of its differentiation from units of another type. Matter is the determinable and quantifying factor, in virtue of which the unit is potentially-multiple and endowed with mass. In the electro-chemical reactions of non-living substances (synthesis, analysis, and transmutation), entelechy is the variant and matter is the constant; in the metabolic activities of living substances (assimilation and dissimilation), matter is the variant and entelechy is the constant. This persistent entelechy of the living unit or organism is what Aristotle terms the _psyche_ or soul. The latter, therefore, may be defined as the vital principle or primary source of life in the organism.

But in using such terms as “soul” and “vital principle” we are employing expressions against which not merely rabid mechanists, but many conservative biologists as well, see fit to protest. The opposition of the latter, however, is found on closer scrutiny to be _nominal_ rather than _real_. It is the _name_ which offends; they have no objection to the _thing signified_. Wilson, to cite a pertinent example, rejects as meaningless all such terms as “vital principle,” “soul,” etc. “They are words,” he avers, “that have been written into certain spaces that are otherwise blank in our record of knowledge, and as far as I can see no more than this.” (“Biology,” p. 23, 1908.) Yet he himself affirms again and again the existence of the reality which these terms (understood in their Aristotelian sense) denote. In discussing the relation of the tissue cell to the multicellular body, for instance, he speaks of “a formative power pervading the growing mass as a whole.” (“The Cell,” 2nd ed., p. 59), and, in his recent lecture on the “Physical Basis of Life,” he makes allusion to “the integrating and unifying principle in the vital processes.” (_Science_, March 9, 1923, p. 284.) It would seem, therefore, that Wilson’s aversion to such terms as soul and vital principle is based on the _dynamic_ sense assigned to them by the neo-vitalists, who, as we have seen, regard the vital principle as a force _sui generis_ or a _unique agent_, which operates intrusively among physicochemical factors in the rôle of an active or efficient cause of vital functions. That such is really the case, appears from his rhetorical question: “Shall we then join hands with the neo-vitalists in referring the unifying and regulatory principle to the _operation_ of an unknown power, a directive _force_, an archæus, an entelechy or a soul?” (_Loc. cit._, p. 285—italics mine.) The objection, however, does not apply to these terms used in their Aristotelian sense. In the philosophy of the Stagirite, the soul, like all other entelechies, is a cause in the _entitive_, but not in the _dynamic_, order of things. Its efficacy is _formal_, not _efficient_. It is not an agent, but a specifying type. The organism must be integrated, specified, and existent _before_ it can operate, and hence its integration and specification by the soul is prior to all vital activity. The soul is a constituent of being and not an immediate principle of action. The soul is not even an entity (in the sense of a complete and separate being), but rather an incomplete entity or constituent of an entity. It takes a complete entity to be an agent, and the soul or vital entelechy is not an independent existent, which is somehow inserted into the organism, but an incomplete being which has no existence of its own, but only coexistence, in the composite that it forms with the organism. Nor is there any such thing as a special vital force resident in the organism. The executive factors in all vital operations of the organic order are the physicochemical energies, which are native to matter in general. These forces, as we have seen, receive a reflexive orientation and are elevated to a higher plane of efficiency by reason of their association with an entelechy superior to the binding and type-determining principles present in inorganic units, but they are not supplanted or superseded by a new executive force. Wilson’s fear, therefore, that the experimental analysis of life is discouraged by vitalism, inasmuch as this conception _subtracts something from the efficiency of the physicochemical forces_, is groundless in the case of hylomorphic vitalism, but is well-founded in the case of such systems as the neo-vitalism of Driesch and the spiritualism of Descartes.

Summing up, therefore, we may say that the soul, like other entelechies, is consubstantial with its material substrate, the body. True it is more autonomous than are the inflexible entelechies of inorganic nature, inasmuch as it is independent of any given atom, molecule, or cell in the organic aggregate. Such a degree of freedom, for example, is not possessed by the most complex molecules, which show no other flexibility than tautomerism, even this small readjustment involving a change in their specificity. But this autonomy does not preclude the essential dependence of the soul upon the body. Generally speaking, the soul is incapable of existence apart from its total substrate, the organism. We say, _generally speaking_, because, as previously intimated, an exception must be made in the case of the _human soul_, which, being, as we shall see, a self-subsistent and spiritual entelechy, is by itself, apart from its material substrate, a sufficient subject of existence, and is therefore capable of surviving the dissolution of its complementary principle, the organism. Nevertheless, even in man, the soul forms one substance with the organism, and the organism participates as a coëfficient factor in all his vital functions, both physiological and psychic, excluding only the _superorganic_ or _spiritual_ functions of rational thought and volition, whose agent and recipient is the _soul alone_. In man, then, soul and body unite to form a single substance, a single nature, and a single person. Apart from the body, the human soul is, indeed, a complete entity, in the sense that it is capable of subsistence (independent existence), but, in another sense, it is not a complete entity, because apart from the body it cannot constitute a complete nature or complete personality. It is this essential incompleteness of the discarnate human soul that forms the natural basis of the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection of the Dead.

Here, however, it is important to note the difference between the hylomorphic spiritualism of Aristotle and the psychophysical spiritualism of Descartes. By the latter _all_ conscious or physic functions are regarded as spiritual. The former, however, recognizes the fundamental difference which exists between the lower or animal, and the higher or rational functions of our conscious life. Sense-perception and sensual emotion belong to the former class, and must be regarded as _organic_ functions, whose agent and subject is neither the soul alone nor the organism alone, but the soul-informed organism or substantial composite of body and soul. Rational thinking and willing, on the contrary, are classified as _superorganic_ or _spiritual_ functions, inasmuch as they exclude the coägency of the organism and have the soul alone for their active cause and receptive subject.

The soul, in fine, is the formal principle or primary source of the threefold life in man, namely, the metabolic life, which man shares with plants, the sentient life, which he shares with animals, and the rational life, which is uniquely human. The human soul is often spoken of as the mind. In their dictionary sense, both terms denote one and the same reality, namely, the human entelechy or vital principle in man, but the connotation of these terms is different. The term soul signifies the vital principle in so far as it is the primary source of every kind of life in man, that is, vegetative, sentient, and rational. The term mind, however, connoting conscious rather than unconscious life, signifies the vital principle in so far as it is the root and ground of our conscious life (both sentient and rational). Here, however, the distinction is of no great moment, and the terms may be regarded as synonymous. The definitions which we have given are, of course, blasphemous in the ears of our modern neo-Kantian phenomenalists, whose preference is for a _functional_, rather than a _substantial_, mind or soul; but we will pay our respects to them later.

It is clear, however, from what has been said, that, for evidences of the superiority and spirituality of the human soul, we must recur, not to the external manifestations of our nutritive life, but to the internal manifestations of our conscious life. The latter are wholly inaccessible to the external senses and perceptible only to the intuition of consciousness, introspection, or internal experience, as it is variously called. All our self-knowledge rests on the basis of introspection, and without it the science of psychology would be impossible. In fact, not only psychology, but the physical sciences as well, depend for their validity on the testimony of consciousness; for the external world is only knowable to the extent that it enters the domain of our consciousness. Recently, as we have seen, a tendency to discredit internal experience has arisen among materialistic extremists. This “tendency,” to quote the words of Keyser, “most notably represented by the behaviorist school of psychologists (like Professor Watson, for example), is manifest in the distrust of introspections as a means of knowledge of mental phenomena and in the growing dependence of psychology upon external observation of animal and human behavior and upon physiological experiment, as if matter were regarded ‘as something much more solid and indubitable than mind’ (Bertrand Russell).”—C. J. Keyser, _Science_, Nov. 25, 1921, p. 520. Since, however, all our knowledge depends on the validity of consciousness, such a tendency is suicidal and destructive of all science, whether physical or psychological. The attempts, therefore, of mechanists, like Loeb, and behaviorists, like Watson, to dispense with consciousness overreach themselves. For how can the mechanists _know_ that there are such things as tropisms, tactisms, or reaction-systems, how can the behaviorist _study_ such things as “situations,” “adjustments,” and S-R-bonds, how can the materialist _become aware_ of the existence of molecules and atoms, except through the medium of their own conscious or psychic states? States of matter can be known only by means of states of mind, and the former, therefore, cannot be any more real than the latter. “What, after all,” asks Cardinal Mercier, “is a fact of nature if the mind has not seized, examined, and assimilated it? True, the information of consciousness is often precarious. For this reason we do well to aid and control it by scientific apparatus. These apparatus, however, can only aid, never supplant, introspection. The telescope does not replace the eye, but extends its vision.” (“Relation of Exp. Psych. to Philosophy,” pp. 40, 41—Trans. of Wirth.)

§ 3. The Nature of the Human Soul

Now our inner consciousness bears unmistakable witness to the existence within us of an abiding subject of our thoughts, feelings, and desires. In biology, the soul is revealed to us as a binding-principle, that obstructs dissolution of the organism, and a persistent type that maintains its identity amid an incessant flux of matter and flow of energy. Clearer still is testimony of introspective psychology, which reveals all our psychic activities and states as successive modifications of this permanent “I,” “self,” “personality,” or “mind,” according as we choose to express it. Human language proves this most forcibly; for the intramental facts and data of our conscious life simply cannot be so much as intelligibly expressed, much less, defined, or differentiated from the extramental facts of the physical world, without using terms that include a reference to this selfsame persistent subject of thought, feeling, and volition. Even inveterate phenomenalists, like Wundt, James, and Titchener, are obliged to submit to this inexorable linguistic law, in common with their unscientific brethren, the generality of mankind, although they do so only after futile attempts at a “scientific revision” of grammar, and with much grumbling over the “barbarous conceptions” of the gross-headed aborigines who invented human language. Be that as it may, no formulation of mental facts is possible except in terms that either denote or connote this permanent source and ground of human thought and feeling, as is apparent, for example, from such phrases as: “_I_ think,” “_I_ wish,” “_I_ hear”; “_mental_ states” (_i. e._ of the mind); _psychic_ functions (_i. e._ of the psyche); _subjective_ idealism (_i. e._ of the subject); a _conscious_ act (from _con-scire_: “to know along with,” because in conscious acts the subject is known along with the object). The phenomenalists occasionally succeed, in their “most precise” passages, in omitting to mention the person, knower, or thinker behind thought, but they do so only at the cost of substituting _personal pronouns_, and of thus bringing back through the window what they have just ejected by way of the door. Our consciousness, therefore, makes us invincibly aware of the _existence_ of a superficially variable, but radically unchangeable, subject of our mental life. It does not, however, tell us anything concerning the _nature_ of this primary ground of thought, whether, for example, it is identical with the cerebral cortex, or something distinct therefrom, whether it is phenomenal or substantial, dynamic or entitive, spiritual or material. To decide these questions the unanalyzed factual data of internal experience do not suffice, but they do suffice to establish the reality of the ego or subject of thought. Later we shall see that the analysis of these data, when taken in conjunction with other facts, forces us to predicate of the soul such attributes as substantiality, simplicity, and spirituality, but here they are cited solely for their factual force and not for their logical implications.

The phenomenalistic schools of Interactionism and Psychophysical Parallelism deny the _substantiality_ of the soul, and seek to resolve it into sourceless and subjectless processes. A phenomenal mind or soul, however, could not be the primary ground of mental life, for the simple reason that phenomena presuppose a supporting medium (otherwise they would be self-maintaining, and therefore, substantial). Now that which presupposes cannot be a primary principle, but only a secondary, or tertiary principle. Consequently, a functional mind could not be the primary and irreducible ground of mental life, but only that _of which_ it is a function, whether that something is a material, or a spiritual substance. For the present, we are not interested in the nature of this ultimate substrate, we are content with the fact that it really exists. Phenomenalists (like Wundt, Paulsen, and James) are very inconsistent when they admit material molecules as the extended substrate of extramental or physical phenomena, while denying the existence of the mind or ego as the inextended substrate of intramental or psychic phenomena. All substance, whether material or spiritual, is inaccessible to the senses. Even material substrates are manifested only by their phenomena, being in themselves supersensible and “metaphysical.” If, then, the human understanding is inerrant in ascribing a material substrate to extramental phenomena, then it is equally inerrant in attributing to intramental phenomena the intimate substrate called mind, whether this substrate be a spiritual substance, or a material substance like the substrate of physical phenomena and that of organic life. As a matter of fact, the Psychophysical Parallelists actually do reduce mental phenomena to a material substrate (viz. the cerebral cortex). Their phenomenalism, which we will refute presently, is but a disingenuous attempt to gloss over their fundamental materialism. At all events, they are willing to admit an ultimate substantial ground of thought and volition, provided it is not claimed that this substrate is of a spiritual nature. The _bare existence_ of some substrate, however, is all that we assert, for the present.

Before leaving this topic, we wish to call attention to the fact that the subject of thought and desire is _active_ as well as _passive_. Mind, in other words, is not merely a persistent medium wherein passive mental states are maintained, but an active and synthetic principle as well. Mental processes, like those of judgment, reasoning, and recognition, require a unitary and unifying principle, which actively examines and compares our impressions and thoughts, in order to discern their relations to one another and to itself. Materialistic psychology, in spite of the plain testimony of consciousness, is all for ignoring the mind in its _active rôle_ as the percipient of the identities and discrepancies of thought, and for regarding mind as a mere complex of mental states or transient flux of fleeting imagery. It is well, then, to bear in mind the indubitable facts of internal experience, to which Cardinal Mercier calls attention. “English psychology,” he observes, “had attempted a kind of anatomy of consciousness. It made all consist in passive sensations or impressions. These impressions came together, fused, dissociated under the guidance of certain laws, principally those of similarity and dissimilarity. The whole process was entirely passive without the intervention of any active subject. It was psychology without a soul. Now that things are being examined a little more closely, psychologists find that there are a lot of conscious states that are without the slightest doubt active on the part of the subject. There are a number of mental states upon which the subject brings his _attention_ to bear, and attention (from _ad-tendere_) means activity. Ordinarily we do not know the intensity of a sensation without _comparing_ it with another preceding one. This work of comparison, or, as the English call it, discrimination, is necessarily _activity_. The Associationists had confounded the fact of coëxistence with the perception of similarity or dissimilarity. Supposing even that the coëxistence of two mental states were entirely passive, it still remains true that the notion of their similarity or dissimilarity requires an _act of perception_. It is absolutely impossible to conceive psychical life without an _active subject_ which _perceives_ itself as living, _notes_ the impressions it receives, _compares_ its acts, _associates_ and _dissociates_ them; in a word, there can be no psychology without a perceiving subject which psychologists call _esprit_, or with the English, ‘mind.’” (_Op. cit._, pp. 52-54—italics his.)

The conflict between phenomenalism and the clear testimony of consciousness is summed up in the following words of T. Fontaine: “If all things are phenomena, then we ourselves can be nothing more than events unknown to one another; in order, then, that such events may appear to us united, so that we may be able to declare their succession within us, it is necessary that something else besides them should exist; and this something else, this link that binds them together, this principle that is conscious of their succession, can be nothing else than a non-event or non-phenomenon, namely, a substance, an ego substantially distinct from sensations.” (“La sensation et la pensée,” p. 23.)

For the phenomenalists, mind is but a collective term for the phenomenal series of our transitory thoughts and feelings. With Wundt, they discard the substantial or entitive soul for a dynamic or functional one, “_die aktuelle Seele_.” (Cf. Grundz. der Phys. Psych., ed. 5th, III, p. 758 _et seq._) Thought antecedes itself by becoming its own thinker; for Titchener tells us: “The passing thought would seem to be the thinker.” (“Pr. of Psych.,” I, p. 342.) We do not think, but thought thinks; John does not walk, but walking walks; aeroplanes do not fly, but flight flies; air does not vibrate, but vibration vibrates. The phenomenalist _objectivates his subjective abstractions_, divorces processes from their agents, and substantializes phenomena. The source of his error is a confusion of the ideal, with the real, order of things. Because it is possible for us _to consider_ a thought apart from any determinate thinker, by means of a mental abstraction, he very falsely concludes that it is possible for a thought _to exist_ without a concrete thinker. It would be obviously absurd to suppose that the so-called Grignard reaction could occur without definite reactants, merely because we can think of it without specifying any particular kind of _alkyl halide_; it would be preposterous to infer, from the fact that vibration can be considered independently of any concrete medium such as air, water, or ether, that therefore a pure vibration can exist without any vibrating medium; and it is equally absurd to project an abstraction like subjectless thought into the realm of existent reality. Abstractions are ideal entities of the mind; they can have no real existence outside the domain of thought. Hence to assign a real or extralogical existence to actions, modalities, and properties, in isolation from the concrete subjects, to which they belong, is a procedure that is not legitimate in any other world than Alice’s Wonderland, where, we are told, the Cheshire Cat left behind his notorious grin long after his benign countenance had faded from view. His faceless grin is a fitting comment on the neo-Kantian folly of those who, as L. Chiesa says, “speak of phenomena without substance, of sensations without subject, of thoughts without the Ego, to which they belong, imitating in this way the poets, who personify honor, virtue, beauty, etc. Now all this proceeds exclusively from a confusion of the subjective abstraction with the reality, and from the assumption that the phenomenon, for example, exists without substance, because we are able (by means of abstraction) to consider the former independently of the latter.” (“La Base del Realismo,” p. 39.) In other words, the mind is capable of separating (representatively, of course, and not physically) its own phenomena from itself, but this is no warrant for transferring the abstractions thus formed from the ideal, to the real, order of things.

So much for the soul’s substantiality, but it is a _simple_, as well as a substantial, principle, that is to say, it is inextended, uncompounded, incorporeal, and not dispersed into quantitative parts or particles. In other words, it is not a composite of constituent elements or complex of integral parts, but something really distinct from the body and pertaining to a different order of reality than matter. This, as we have seen, does not necessarily mean that it is immaterial, in the sense of being intrinsically independent of matter. In a word, simplicity does not involve spirituality (absolute immateriality). Not only plant and animal souls, but even mineral entelechies, are simple, in the negative sense of excluding extension, corporeality and dispersal into quantitative parts, but they are, none the less, intrinsically dependent on matter and are therefore material principles.

That the soul or vital entelechy is really distinct from its material substrate is apparent from the perennial process of metabolism enacted in the living organism. In this process, matter is the variant and entelechy or specific type is the constant. Hence the two principles are not only distinct, but separable. Moreover, the soul’s rôle as a binding-principle that obstructs dissolution is incompatible with its dispersal into quantitative parts; for such a principle, far from being able to bind, would require binding itself, and could not, therefore, be the primary source of unification in the organism. Finally, the soul must be incorporeal; since, if it were a corporeal mass, it could not be “a formative power pervading the growing mass as a whole” (Wilson); for this would involve the penetration of one body by another. Consequently, the soul is a simple, inextended, incorporeal reality undispersed into quantitative parts.

Introspective psychology bears witness to the same truth; for consciousness reinforced by memory attests _the substantial permanence of our personal identity_. We both think and regulate our practical conduct in accordance with this sense of unchanging personal identity. All recognition of the past means simply this, that we perceive the substantial identity of our present, with our past, selves throughout all the experiences and vicissitudes of life. There is an inmost core of our being which is unchanging and which remains always identical with itself, in spite of the flow of thought and the metabolic changes of the life-cycle. It is this that gives us the sense of being always identically the same person, from infancy to maturity, and from maturity to old age. It is this that constitutes the thread of continuity which links our yesterdays with today, and makes us morally responsible for all the deliberate deeds of a lifetime. Courts of law do not acquit a criminal because he is in a different frame of mind from that which induced him to commit murder, nor do they excuse him on the score that metabolism has made him a different mass of flesh from that which perpetrated the crime. Such philosophies as phenomenalism and materialism are purely academic. Even their advocates dare not reduce them to consistent practice in everyday life.

Nor can the cases of _alternating personalities_ be adduced as counterevidence. In the first place, these cases are psychopathic and not normal. In the second, they are due, not to a modification of _personality itself_, but to a modification in the _perception of personality_. Since this perception is, as we shall see, extrinsically dependent on cerebral imagery, any neuropathic affection is liable to modify the perception of personality by seriously disturbing the imagery, on which it depends. But (_pace_ Wundt and James) the perception of personality is one thing, and personality itself quite another. Perception does not produce its objects, but presupposes them, and self-perception is no exception to this rule. Introspection, therefore, does not create our personality, but reveals and represents it. If then to the intuition of consciousness our personality appears as an unchanging principle that remains always substantially identical with itself, it follows that this perception must be terminated by something more durable than a flux of transient molecules or a stream of fleeting thought. Unless this perceptive act has for its object some unitary and uniformly persistent reality distinct from our composite, corruptible bodies, and not identified with our transitory thoughts, this sense of permanent personal identity would be utterly impossible. Materialism, which recognizes nothing more in man than a decaying organism, a mere vortex of fluent molecules, is at a loss to account for our consciousness of being always the same person. Phenomenalism, which identifies mind or self with the “thought-stream,” is equally impotent to account for this sense of our abiding sameness.

James’ attempt at a phenomenalistic explanation of the persistent continuity of self, on the assumption that each passing thought knows its receding predecessor and becomes known, in turn, by its successor, is puerile. To pass over other flaws, this absurd theory encounters an insuperable difficulty in _sleep_, which interrupts, for a considerable interval, the flow of conscious thought. Thought is a transient reality, which passes, so far as its actuality is concerned, and can only remain in the form of a permanent effect. Unless, therefore, there were some _persistent medium_ in which the last waking thought could leave a permanent vestige of itself, the process of relaying the past could never be resumed, and we would lose our personal identity every twenty-four hours. The mind, or subject of thought, then, must be an abiding and unitary principle distinct from our composite bodies, and from our manifold and fleeting thoughts.

Finally, to the two foregoing attributes of the human soul (substantiality and simplicity), we must add a third and crowning attribute, namely, _spirituality_. It is this, and this alone, that differentiates the human from the bestial soul, which latter is but an incomplete complement of matter, incapable of existence apart from matter, and doomed to perish with the dissolution of the organism, as the cylindrical form of a candle perishes with the consumption of the wax by the flame.

All the psychic activities of the brute, such as sensation, object-perception, imagination, associative memory, sensual emotion, etc., are organic functions of the sensitivo-nervous type. In all of them the agent and recipient is not the soul alone, but the psycho-organic composite of soul and organism, that is, the soul-informed sensory and central neurons of the cerebrospinal system. The sensory neurons are nerve cells that transmit centerward the excitations of physical stimuli received by the external sense organs or receptors, in which their axon-fibers terminate. These receptors and sensory neurons are extended material organs proportioned and specialized for receiving physical impressions from external bodies, either directly through surface-contact with the bodies themselves or their derivative particles (_e.g._ in touch, taste and smell), or indirectly through surface-contact with an extended vibrant medium such as air, water, or ether (_e.g._ in hearing and sight). The central neurons of the cerebral cortex are, as it were, the tablets, upon which the excitations transmitted thither by the sensory neurons, record the extended neurograms that constitute the physical basis of the concrete imagery of memory and imagination. Interior senses, then, like memory and imagination, merely continue and combine what was preëxistent in the exterior senses. Their composite imagery is rigidly proportioned to the extended neurograms imprinted on the cerebral neurons, and these neurograms, in turn, are determined both qualitatively and quantitatively by the physical impressions received by the receptors, and these impressions, finally, are exactly proportioned to the action of the material stimuli in contact with the receptors. Thus the composite images of imagination as well as those of direct perception are proportioned to the underlying neurograms of the cortex and correspond exactly, as regards quality, intensity, and extensity, to the original stimulus affecting the external receptors. Hence men born blind can never imagine color, nor can men born deaf ever imagine sound. An inextended principle, such as the discarnate soul, cannot receive or record impressions from extended vibrant media, or from extended corporeal masses. For this the soul requires the intrinsic coöperation of material receptors. Now, the highest cognitive and appetitive functions of the brute (_e.g._ sense-perception and emotion) are, as has been stated, of the sensitivo-nervous or psycho-organic type, that is, they are functions in which the material organism intimately coöperates; brute animals give no indication of having so much as a single function, which proceeds from the soul alone and which is not communicated to the organism. Hence the bestial soul is “totally immersed” in matter; as regards both operation and existence, it is “intrinsically dependent” upon its material complement, the organism. It never operates save in conjunction with the latter, and its _sole reason for existence_ is adequately summed up in saying that it exists, not for its own sake, but merely _to vivify and sensitize the organism_. Consequently, the brute soul, though inextended and incorporeal, belongs, not to the spiritual, but to the material, order of things.