The Principle of Human Life

a) The Human Soul — b) Nature of the Human Soul — c) Origin of the Human Soul

a) The Human Soul

We have already learned that every living body, every organism, has, in its essential constitution, an element or constituent part, by virtue of which the organism is alive. We have also learned that this life-principle is not the material of which the organism is composed, nor is it some special arrangement of that material; neither is it some combination of physical, mechanical, and chemical forces which manifest their interplay in the organism. The life-principle is something over; it is something over and above the body-mass, the body-structure, and the body as a field for the play of lifeless energies. And it is a substantial something, not an accidental of the living body. Nay, it is the substantial form of the living body; the form which constitutes the organism as an actual body, a living body, and a living body of one specific type. The life-principle is the root-source of all the actualness, and all the actual power and operation, which the organism possesses. It is called the soul of the organism.

Now, man, that is to say a human being, is an organism or living body. Therefore man has a life-principle which is in him a basic constituent part; which is the substantial form of the living human body; which is the root-source of all that is actual about the human organism; which is “the first act of the human organic body.” This life-principle is called the human soul.

We have already adverted to the fact that the ancient term soul is seldom used nowadays as a simple equivalent or synonym for life-principle. Modern scientists and philosophers do not, as a rule, speak of the soul of plant or brute animal. We, however, have done so, following a very old and honorable usage. But we are aware of the fact that the unqualified term soul is almost universally understood (among those who use the term at all) to indicate the spiritual, immortal life-principle of man. When, therefore, we speak, in the present study, of the soul, we mean the human soul, the spiritual and immortal life-principle of man.

b) Nature of the Human Soul

The vegetal and the sentient life-principle are, as we have explained, material substantial forms: they depend upon matter for their being and their operations. They are therefore incomplete both in point of substantiality and in point of species; they cannot, without their respective organic bodies, exist as substances or as plant or animal. But the human soul is incomplete in point of species only; it is complete in point of substantiality. The human soul can (and when a man dies it does) exist independently of the human body, and in its separate existence it exercises its own proper operations of intellect and will. And this is so because the soul is spiritual, and not material.

How shall we prove that the human soul is spiritual? We shall see what the soul does; we shall notice its operations. Operations follow essence and indicate the nature of that essence. If the operations of the human soul are of a spiritual nature, they infallibly prove that the soul which operates is a spiritual substance. But how shall we come at the soul to observe its operations? We shall observe the operations of man, the substantial composite of body and soul. We shall study the human operations and discover whether these could all be exercised without a spiritual life-principle or, on the other hand, whether some of these operations require a spiritual principle as their sufficient explanation and reason.

1. The human soul is a substance. The soul is not a mere quality or accident of the body. It is not a harmony of bodily parts (as the ancients sometimes described it, and as many modern thinkers treat it). The soul is a genuine substantial reality — a constituent element of the human substance, not a mere characterization of the body. This is proved by the soul’s capacity to exist apart from the body after death, exercising its own operations.

2. The human soul is simple. The soul has no quantitative parts. It is not extended in space. It cannot be divided or cut or broken up. The proof lies partly in the character of its operations. The soul exercises the operation of complete self-reflection: the mind can make its own act of knowing the very object of its knowing. A thing made of parts could not possibly bend entirely back upon itself in this way; part might be bent back upon part, but the whole could not wholly bend back upon itself. This operation of complete reflection is thus a proof of the soul’s simplicity.

3. The human soul is spiritual. A spiritual thing is one which has no matter in its make-up. The soul has no matter in its make-up; it is a form alone, not matter-and-form. Hence it is integrally simple. Now the proof that the soul has no matter in its make-up is found in the soul’s proper and peculiar operation of intellectual knowledge.

The intellect of man grasps objects in universal and in the abstract. By what organ could you know two — that is, two by itself; not two of this or that, but simply two? You can see two bricks; you can hear two sounds; you can smell two odors; you can touch and feel two bodily objects; you can taste two flavors; you can imagine two. But you cannot, by any sense or sense-organ, lay hold of two — that is, of two by itself; not two of this or that, but simply two. But the mind of man can understand what two means. Now, the operation of understanding things in the abstract is the characteristic operation of a faculty which is entirely free from the limiting conditions of matter. No material organ, as such, can grasp objects in the abstract, in universal. The senses grasp individual concrete objects here and now present. The intellect, in grasping two in the abstract, grasps it as a truth about everything to which twoness applies: two horses, two mountains, two nations, two stars. The intellect grasps a universal truth. And what grasps truth in universal must be a faculty that transcends the limitations of matter. Hence the intellect is not a material faculty; it is a spiritual faculty. And a spiritual faculty can reside only in a spiritual substance. Therefore the human soul, in which the intellect resides, is a spiritual substance.

4. The human soul is immortal. An immortal substance is one which cannot die — which cannot cease to be. Now, death or cessation of being comes about in one of two ways: per se (that is, of its own inner nature, by dissolution of its own constituent parts) or per accidens (that is, as a consequence of the dissolution of something else upon which the substance depends for its being and operation). The souls of plants and animals die per accidens: when the organism dissolves, the material soul perishes because it depends on the organism for its existence. Can the human soul die either way?

The human soul cannot die per se. For the soul is simple; it has no quantitative parts. What has no parts cannot dissolve or fall apart. Hence the soul cannot die per se.

Can the human soul die per accidens, that is, perish when the body dissolves? It cannot. For the human soul does not depend on the body for its being, as do the material souls of plant and animal. The human soul is spiritual; it can exist without the body; it does exist without the body when a man dies. Hence the dissolution of the body cannot, of itself, bring about the dissolution or cessation of the soul.

But could God annihilate the soul? Considered in His absolute power, God can do so. But considered in His ordered power (i.e., His power brought into alignment and order with the other divine perfections) He cannot annihilate it. For God is infinite Wisdom; it would not be wise — and God is infinite Goodness — to create a substance capable of endless existence only to negate its capacity and utterly destroy it. Nor would it be kind or good to implant in a spiritual soul a “longing after immortality,” such as that to which all sane minds confess, and then render the desire futile by complete destruction of the soul. Therefore we say, in the language of the philosopher and theologian, “In His absolute power God can annihilate the soul; but by his ordered power (i.e., His power brought into alignment and order with the other divine perfections) He cannot annihilate it.”

c) Origin of the Human Soul

Since the human soul is spiritual, it cannot be educed from the potentiality of matter as the material souls of plant and animal are educed. A spiritual substance cannot be the unfolding of what is latent in matter. The human soul can come into existence only by creation — that is, by being produced out of nothing. And the act of creating is the act of God alone.

Every human soul, therefore, is individually created by a direct and immediate act of God, and is simultaneously infused into the body — that is, substantially united with the body — to constitute the one human substance. The soul does not pre-exist to its body. The first moment that finds a human soul without its body is the moment it leaves the body when a man dies.

When is the soul created and infused? Two opinions have been held. Creationism in its stricter form holds that the moment of the soul’s creation and infusion is the moment of conception. Traducianism in its modified and acceptable form holds that the soul is separately created and infused by a single act of divine power some weeks after conception. The arguments offered for each of these two conflicting doctrines are interesting and not without weight, but none of them is absolutely conclusive. In the light of authority on the subject, and also in view of the relative merits of argument on either side, it appears that the more probable doctrine is that which asserts the moment of conception as the moment of the soul’s creation and infusion. But the point we make here is that, whenever the soul is created and infused, its creation and infusion are absolutely simultaneous, and come of a single direct act of divine power.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have described and defined the human soul as the first principle of life in man. We have made a detailed study and proof of the substantiality, simplicity, spirituality, and immortality of the soul. We have seen that the soul can come into existence only by way of creation, direct and immediate in each instance. We have discussed the moment of the soul’s creation, and have found that the soul does not pre-exist to its body, but is created and infused by a single divine act and therefore at a single instant, which is, to follow the more probable opinion in the matter, the moment of conception.