Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/407

* SOUL. 353 SOUL. tainty and confusion specially in the earlier tra- dition of the Hebrews. In the later tradition, and especially under the inlliience of prophet- ism, more retined conceptions followed the preaching of ethical monotheism. A trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit appears among the later Jewish and early Christian thinkers, in which •body' (cru/ta) is the material, 'soul' (ip^XV) and 'spirit' {TffO/m) the spiritual part of the human personality ; but the tendency is to resolve this threefold "division into a dualism in which body and soul are' joined against the spirit. The whole veight of Christianitj' was thrown on the side of the soul conceived of as that part of man that is under divine law. This part was regarded as having absolute worth, inasmuch as it is the seat of the divine spirit, and is opposed to the 'flesh' (ird/)^), i.e. to hunuin nature in estrangement from the divine. The salvation of the soul is negatively its deliverance from bondage to the 'flesh' in this broad signification, and, positively, luiion and communion with God, the essence of the soul's life. We find a similar gradual distinction between body and soul in the history of Greek thought. In Homer the soul is a kind of image of the body (efSoiXoj'), 'nbich escapes in death through the' mouth or through an open wound. AH natural objects are supposed to have souls. The Ionic philosophers, incapable of making this distinction clear, sought for some physical prin- ciple to define what they meant by the soul, and found it in water, air, fire, or the 'infinite' (hylozoism) ; and wh^i later reflection added to this the notion of reason it w-as only as 'think- ing air' that the soul was conceived even then. Nor did Parmenides with his absolute unity, or the P_vthagoreans with their doctrine of num- bers, attain a clear differentiation of body and soul; and Democritus is openly materialistic, maintaining that, inasmuch as matter is eternal, there is no need to distinguish body from that which moves it. Anaxagoras (born B.C. 499) was the first of the Greek thinkers to formulate the distinction in question in his theory of in- telligence (voCs), which, he contended, is differ- ent from body because it is simple, mixes with nothing, is never passive, is infinite, and has absolute power over matter. Though this can- not be taken as a clear definition of the soul as an individualized thinking substance, it is an advance in thought. Socrates added to this theory of Anaxagoras the idea of the good, which he regarded as equivalent to the absolute or God, and from it derived the soul of man as a small part, clearly recognizing the distinction between it and the body, together with the implication of immortality, which, on his hypothesis of the good, was contained in it. The deeper reflection of Plato and Aristotle naturally discloses more satisfactory evidence of positive ideas. Plato in particular was much influenced by his general metaphysical theory. Thus in the Timcous he teaches that the soul is one of many modes of 'the one and the many,' by which he means the absolute mind and the phenomenal world of re- lated things ruled by the clemiiirriiis. The high- est of these incarnations is in the stars, the next in man (Philebus). The soul of the world is created intelligent by God. and it is this soul that is in our bodies. As such it has the principle of movement in itself: it is self-moved; has reality (oi<rta), and partakes of the harmony and beauty of the world as created by God, and also leads to all true knoviledge. According to Aris- totle the soul is the formal, cflicient, and final cause (^KTcXex"" vpuri]) of the body (Dc AniiiKi). the unity of three kinds of causal- ity; and he distinguishes three kinds of soul, the vegetable, the sensitive, and the intellectual, which respectively represent the spiritual life of plant, animal, and human beings. As the 'final cause' of the body, nuin's soul cannot be indeterminate; it must have individuality to organize it, direct its movements, and lead it to its true end. Here we approach very near to the modern conception of the soul as an individ- ualized, self-conscious, self-determining reality; but not quite, for this idea w-as not fully at- tained by Greek thought. Among the early Christian philosophers we find a mixture of Greek and Cliristian ideas. The characteristics of this period show the tre- mendous hold which the spiritual ideas of Chris- tianity had taken on the strongest minds. The writings of the Apologists, the Church Fathers, particularly Clement of Alexandria and Origen, while they do not reveal any systematic doctrine of the soul, are replete nevertheless with the keenest insight. The profound analysis of Augus- tine, however, made positive contributions to the problem. Anticipating Descartes, he maintained that it is impossible for thought to be an at- tribute of that which does not think; even if I doubt, the doubt itself must be an act of the soul and therefore a real fact of spiritual sig- nificance. If the soul were corporeal, its func- tions would be limited to the perception of bod}'; but now it has the power of reflection, of knowl- edge, of love, and is, above all, conscious of itself, and therefore cannot be an attribtite of extended substance merely {De Trinitate). The theories developed under Scholasticism are for the most part adaptations of the later Greek ideas to the necessities of Church doctrine and authority. Hence we find some inclining to take the view of Plato that the finite soul is part of a world- sotil, as that idea was developed in Stoicism and later Jewish Hellenism : others incline to Aris- totle's teleological conception of the soul as a cause realizing itself in the different grades of reality. It was Descartes who brought reflection back from the region of scholastic metaphysics to the subjective side of the problem. Descartes dis- covered, as Augustine and William of Auvergne had discovered before him, that to doubt the existence of the soul is to contradict one's self; for doubt is a mental fact, and as such has reality. I that doubt, think; I may imagine that I have no body, but as long as I think I have real existence; I think, there- fore I am (coijito ergo sum). If it be replied that my thinking does not imply reality then the reply is : God cannot deceive us, and His omnipotence can realize ever'S'thing we conceive; therefore every clear and distinct idea we have must be real, and since I have a clear and dis- tinct idea of myself and of my body in their distinction, it follows that soul and body are dis- tinct and may exist without each other. Thought and extension are two attributes, and it is thought alone which it is impossible for us to doubt. Thus body and soul are left opposed to each other, so far, at any rate, as man is con-