Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/179

 SOTO

153

SOVh

EcHARD, Script, ord. presd., II, 171 aq,; HuRTEB. NomencUitor, II (Innsbruck. 1906), 1373 aq.; Veil in Revue thomiste (May. June, 1904). 151 sqq.; (May, June. 1905), 174 sqq.

Charles J. Callan. Soto, Hernando de. See De Soto, Hernando.

Soul (Gr. 'I'vxv; Lat. anima; Fr. dine; Ger. Seele). — The question of the reality of the soul and its dis- tinction from the body is among the most important problenLS of philosophy, for with it is bound up the doetrine of a future life. Various theories as to the nature of the soul have claimed to be reconcilable with the tenet of immortality, but it is a sure instinct that leads us to suspect every attack on the substan- tiality or spirituality of the soul as an assault on the belief in existence after death. The soul may be defined as the ultimate internal principle by which we think, feel, and will, and by which our bodies are animated. The term "mind" usually denotes this principle as the subject of our conscious states, while "soul" denotes the source of our vegetative activi- ties .OS well. That our vital acti\aties proceed from a principle capable of subsisting in itself, is the thesis of the substantiality of the soul: that this principle is not itself composite, e.xtended, corporeal, or essen- tially and intrinsically dependent on the body, is the doctrine of spirituality. If there be a life after death, clearly the agent or subject of our vital activities must be capable of an existence separate from the body. The belief in an animating principle in some sense distinct from the body is an almost inevitable inference from the observed facts of life. The lowest savages arrive at the concept of the soul almost without reflection, certainly without any severe mental effort. The mysteries of birth and death, the lapse of conscious life during sleep and in swooning, even the commonest operations of imagina- tion and memory, which abstract a man from his bodily presence even while awake — -all such facts invincibly suggest the existence of something besides the visible organism, internal to it, but to a large extent independent of it, and leading a life of its own. In the rude psychology of the savage, the soul is often represented as actually migrating to and fro during dreams and trances, and after death haunting the neiglibourhood of its body. Nearly always it is figured iis something extremely volatile, a perfume or a breath. Often, as among the Fijians, it is rep- resented as a miniature replica of the body, so small as to be in\-isible. The Samoans have a name for the soul which means "that which comes and goes". Many savage peoples, such as the Dyaks and Suma- trans, bind various parts of the body with cords during sickness to prevent the escape of the soul. In short, all the evidence goes to show that Dualism, however uncritical and inconsistent, is the instinc- tive creed of "primitive man" (see Animism).

The Soul in Ancient Philosophy. — Early litera- ture bears the same stamp of Dualism. In the "Rig- Veda" and other hturgical books of India, we find frequent references to the coming and going of mnnas (mind or soul). Indian philosophy, whether Brahminic or Buddhistic, with its various systems of metempsychosis, accentuated the distinction of soul and body, making the bodily life a mere transi- tory episode in the existence of the soul. They all taught the doctrine of limited immnrlnlity, ending either with the periodic world-destruction (Brah- minism) or with att.ainraent of Xirvana (Buddhism). The doctrine of a world-soul in a highh' abstract form is met with as early as the eighth century before Christ, when we find it described as "the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unknown knower, the Eternal in which space is woven and which is woven in it".

In Greece, on the other hand, the first essays of philosophy took a positive and somewhat materialis- tic direction, inherited from the pre-philosophic age,

from Homer and the early Greek religion. In Homer, while the distinction of soul and body is recognized, the soul is hardly conceived as possessing a substan- tial existence of its own. Severed from the body, it is a mere shadow, incapable of energetic hfe. The philosophers did something to correct such views. The earliest school was thati of the Hylozoists; these conceived the soul as a kind of cosmic force, and at- tributed animation to the whole of nature. Any natural force might be designated i'vx'^: thus Thales uses this term for the attractive force of the magnet, and similar language is quoted even from Anaxagoras and Democritus. With this we may compare the "mind-stuff" theory and Pan-psychism of certain modern scientists. Other philosopliers again de- scribed the soul's nature in terms of substance. Anax- imander gives it an aeriform constitution; Heraoli- tus describes it as a fire. The fundamental thought is the same. The cosmic ether or fire is the subtlest of the elements, the nourishing flame which imparts heat, life, sense, and inteUigence to all things in their several degrees and kinds. The Pythagoreans taught that the soul is a harmony, its essence consisting in those perfect mathematical ratios which are the law of the universe and the music of the heavenly spheres. With this doctrine was combined, aci^ording to Cicero, the belief in a universal world-spirit, from which all particular souls are derived.

AU these early theories were cosmological rather than psychological in character. Theologj', physics, and mental science were not as yet distinguished. It is only with the rise of dialectic and the growing recognition of the problem of knowledge that a gen- uinely psychological theory became possible. In Plato the two standpoints, the cosmological and the epistemological, are found combined. Thus in the "Timaeus" (p. 30) we find an account derived from Pythagorean sources of the origin of the soul. First the world-soul is created according to the laws of mathematical .symmetry and musical concord. It is composed of two elements, one an element of "sameness" (Tairdv), corresponding to the univer- sal and intelligible order of truth, and the other an element of distinction or "otherness" (Birepov), corresponding to the world of sensible and particular existences. The individual human soul is constructed on the same plan. Sometimes, as in the "Phajdrus", Plato teaches the doctrine of plurality of souls (cf. the well-known allegory of the charioteer and the two steeds in that dialogue). The rational soul was located in the head, the passionate or spirited soul in the breast, the appetitive soul in the abdomen. In the "Republic", instead of the triple soul, we find the doctrine of three elements within the complex unity of the single soul. The question of immor- tality was a principal subject of Plato's speculations. His account of the origin of the soul in the " Timaius " leads him to deny the intrinsic immortality even of the world-soul, and to admit only an immortality conditional on the good pleasure of God. In the "Pha;do" the chief argument for the immortality of the soul is based on the nature of intellectual knowledge interpreted on the theory of reminiscence; this of course imphes the pre-existencc of the soul, and perhaps in strict logic its eternal pre-existence. There is also an argument from the soul's necessary participation in the idea of life, which, it is argued, makes the idea of its extinction imjiossible. These various lines of argument are nowliere harmonized in Plato (see Immortality'). The Platonics doctrine tended to an exireme Transcendentalism. Soul and body are distinct orders of reality, anfl boflily exis- tence involves a kind of violence to the higher part of our composite nature. The body is the "prison", the "tomb", or even, as some later Platonists expres- sed it, the "hell" of the soul. In Aristotle this error is avoided. His definition of the soul as "the first