The Union of Soul and Body in Man

Article 2. The Union of Soul and Body in Man

a) Nature of the Union

A union is either the process of conjoining two or more things into a single reality, or it is the product of such a process. We use the term union to indicate the process of uniting when we say, “The union of\the colonies was effected by clear-sighted and heroic statesmen.” We employ the term in its other sense as the product or result of uniting when we cry with Webster, “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable,” or when we sing, “The Union forever !”

There are two main types of union, to wit, accidental union and substantial union. Accidental union is manifested in the conjoining of realities in such wise that each keeps its own complete nature and operations, and so the elements (i. e., things united) do not fuse together, so to speak, to constitute a new essence. Such a union is observed in a heap of stones, for example, or in a team of horses hitched together to make the one pulling-force which draws the wagon, or in a mixture of water and sand. Such a union also is the moral union, or conjoining of wills, which brings different men together to form one society. Such a union again exists between the motorist and the car he is driving, between the rower and the boat he is propelling, between the organist and the instrument he is playing.—A substantial union is manifested by the conjoining of elements in such wise that a new substantial essence emerges. Thus hydrogen and oxygen, for example, are united to form the new substance, water. Water does not exhibit the properties of either of the gases which combined to form it, and by properties, as we have learned (Cf. Part I, Chap. I, Art. I, cr), essences are recognized and distinguished one from another. The essence water is neither the essence hydrogen nor the essence oxygen, but a new essence which emerges from the uniting of hydrogen and oxygen. Therefore this union is substantial. Another example of substantial union is that of prime matter and substantial form to constitute an actual body. Here the elements do not change, as hydrogen and oxygen change in forming water; the elements are incomplete substances (not complete like the elements of water before their union) and they come together as complements; together they fill out a single completeness or new essence. The resultant body is not matter alone, it is a specific kind of matter; and this specific actuality does not come from its being material, else all bodies would be specifically or essentially the same, which is not the case. Nor is the body form alone, for, unless it be spiritual, a form cannot exist by itself. The body is not prime matter alone, nor form alone, but a definite individual corporeal substance of a certain essential kind; it is a single substantial composite or compound of matter-and-form.

A substantial union is either simply essential or it is personal. A simply essential substantial union is illustrated in the examples just given; it is the union of substantial elements to form a new essence. But when the new essence is a complete substance of the rational order; the union is personal. A complete substance of the rational order means a complete substance endowed with the capacity for understanding and willing, even if this capacity be not usable because of immaturity or other obstacle which blocks,—temporarily or permanently,—the acquisition or use of a requisite fund of experience. Thus every man, even an infant, even an imbecile, is a complete substance of the rational order; he is a person; and the essential elements unite in him to form a personal union.

It is our contention that the union of soul and body in each human being is a personal union; further, we contend that the human soul is, in each human being, the substantial form of the human organism, or, more simply, the soul is the substantial form of the man.

Our doctrine is the common teaching of all the Scholastic philosophers, and it has been admirably proved by St. Thomas Aquinas, following and amplifying the doctrine of Aristotle. There have been, however, notable philosophers who held the demonstrably mistaken view that the union of soul and body in a man is merely an accidental one. Plato taught that the soul of a man resides in his body and controls it, much as a rower, seated in a boat, plies the oars and directs the movement of his craft. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) defined man as a soul, and regarded the vegetal and sentient processes as mechanical. Vicomte de Ronald (1754-1840) held that man is an intellect served by organs,—une intelligence servie par des organes. We maintain that man is a composite of body and soul, a single if compound essence, and we hold that soul and body come together in a man, not as hydrogen and oxygen in water (for these gases change their proper nature in their fusion) but as incomplete substances which find their complement in union, and result in a substance which is not body and not soul but man,—not a mere organism and not a pure spirit but a single human substance. The two points we have to prove are these: the union of soul and body in man is a personal substantial union; the soul is the substantial form of the living human body.

1. The union of body and soul in man is a personal substantial union. We are to show that the soul and body of a man are so united as to form one person. Now, a person is, first and foremost, what philosophers call a supposit. A supposit is a complete individual substance which is not part or parcel of another substance. A tree is a supposit, a horse is a supposit. A branch of a tree (while it is still part and parcel of the tree) is not a, supposit, nor is the leg of a horse a supposit. The branch of the tree and the organic parts of the horse are indeed substantial, but they are not substances which stand, so to speak, on their own feet or exercise their own operations independently of any other substance. For the branch manifests the growth and life of the tree; the organic parts of the horse exercise the horse’s operations. You may, indeed, sever the branch from the tree, and then it is a supposit, either as a new plant (if it be such a cutting as can, if planted, sustain life and exercise all the vegetal functions), or as a dying or dead limb of a tree. The leg of a horse, if severed from the organism, is a supposit (or, more correctly, it is a parcel of sup-posits) but it is not an organic or living supposit; it is a mass of dead matter which will presently be resolved into the physical and chemical substances which compose it.

There is an old and true saying that “Actions belong to the supposit.” The growth of a branch is the growth of the plant to which the branch belongs; the movement of a horse’s feet is the movement of the horse which uses the feet. If a burglar reaches through a window and takes our valuables, we do not enter suit against the burglar’s arm and hand, but against the man. For the actions of the man’s arm and hand are the man’s actions. “Actions belong to the supposit.”

Now, if the supposit be “of the rational order,” that is to say, if the supposit have understanding and will, the supposit is called a person. And if we can show that the actions and operations observable in a man (who is a union of soul and body) are to be referred to one single individual substance, then this substance is not only the result or product of the substantial union of soul and body, but of the personal union of these elements. Now, as a matter of fact, all of a man’s operations are referred to one single individual substance, to wit, the individual man. We know by reflecting upon our own operations that all of them are ours. Each of us understands that his growth or his digestive function is his; each knows that he feels, he sees, he senses, he thinks, he reasons, he makes up his mind. No one thinks of saying that his eyes see and his mind thinks and his will chooses. He says, “I see, I think, I choose.” And he says rightly, for, upon reflection, he is aware that, while he uses his eyes to see and his mind to think and his will to choose, it is truly he,—an undivided substantial actuality,—that uses these wondrous instruments. In a word, a man clearly grasps the truth of the fact that his experiences are his own. They are, in many cases, under his control. His eyes will infallibly see if he lets them look, but he may refuse to let them look. Distracting thoughts may oppress his mind, but he can do much to banish them by steadfastly fixing his mind on other things. He may find it hard to make a choice, but difficulty is not impossibility. Many things a man cannot control; he cannot rearrange the circulation of the blood; he cannot, by taking thought add to his height one cubit, or take off as much from his girth. None the less, he knows that his growth is his growth; it affects him; it proceeds from sources immanently active that have their root and spring in his own life-principle. The individual character of our nature is apparent to each of us. It is especially manifest in matters of mind and will, and through these, it is manifest in merely bodily things. We are aware, with unshakable certitude, that our thoughts and opinions and volitions, our hopes and aspirations and ideals and ambitions, our aches and our pains, our health and fitness, our digestion and growth, all are ours; each of us recognizes these things as his own. And if there is any value in human knowledge, any certitude in human experience, this elemental certitude of the unity of our nature is a thing truly known and truly certain.

The interaction and interdependence of the operations of a man indicate the unity of his substantial nature. They show that man is a substantial composite, or, in other terms, that his soul and his body are substantially united, and form a substantial union. And, since man has understanding and will, this substantial union is a supposit of the rational order: it is a person; and therefore the substantial union of its essential elements is a personal substantial union.

One need not go into details to prove the interaction and interdependence of the human operations. We shall discuss presently the precise nature of the mutual influence of body and soul; here we merely consider the fact without discerning its mode. It is a fact which proves beyond all dispute the substantial unity of a man. And the fact is obvious. How is it that a man may find his digestion upset by worry ? Worry is mental; it belongs to the rational order or rational life of a man; digestion is vegetal. Yet it is a fact of commonest experience that worry can cause indigestion, and, conversely, indigestion can cause mental distress. Who has not felt a loss of appetite for food, or a loss of tendency for sleep, when some dread situation is persently to be faced ? Who has not experienced some sentient or vegetal effect of a mental activity? Envision a healthy young student impatiently waiting the dinner-gong. He is ravenous, and plans to create a minor famine when he reaches the table. Before the welcome sound of the bell comes to him, he receives a telegram which announces the death of a dear relative. Gone instantly is his desire for food. And yet the information imparted by the sad message is something which only the mind can apprehend. Again, the sentient operations can intimately and instantly af-feet the rational operations and the vegetal functions. A toothache can make study or mental concentration impossible, and it can upset the nutritive powers and operations. A devoted lover of good music may find the finest symphony unendurable, if he is nursing a collection of boils. A workman in a factory once saw a heavy iron wheel fall upon the foot of a fellow workman. Immediately he ran to the man’s assistance. With a mighty effort, he lifted the wheel from the crushed foot. Later he found that he was unable to lift the great weight of the wheel, try as he would. Yet the incident is explicable, and it illustrates the interaction of body operations and soul operations in a man. He saw the accident (sentient operation); he understood its significance (rational operation); then, in response to his knowledge and the tendency to act on it, certain glands poured their secretion into his blood (vegetal operation) and immensely increased his muscular strength for a short period. It is manifest, and the proof of the point lies within the experience of everyone, that body and soul in man exercise a common joint operation: the man feels, the man understands and wills, the man is nourished and grows. And yet the man is a union of unlike elements, as one knows from their operations. Some of his operations are organic, some are altogether supra-organic and not to be exercised by any bodily part or power. We must conclude that the union of the essential elements in a man is a substantial and personal union. In other words, the union of body and soul in a man is a personal substantial union.

2. The human soul is the substantial form of the living body. The human soul is, as we have many times seen, the human life-principle. It is that whereby a man is alive and can exercise all the operations of a man. When life is gone, when the life-principle departs at death, the corpse is not a man; it has none of the functions or operations proper to a man. Therefore we know that the life-principle is that actuality which is the formal principle of a man’s being as a man, and it is united substantially with the man’s body to form therewith one complete and specific essence. It is the formal principle of a man’s being, for without it the organism is nof a man. It is substantially united with the organism (as we have just proved) to constitute a single complete and specific essence. But to say this is to say that the soul is the substantial form of the human organism or living body. Thus simply and directly is our point established.

We may state the matter in somewhat different fashion. The substantial form of a body is the determining principle (itself an incomplete substance) which combines with matter in substantial union to constitute a body of determinate species or essence. Now, that which substantially constitutes the human body in its determinate essence as human is the life-principle or soul. For when the soul departs (when a man dies) the body instantly loses its character as a human body; the human essence or species is corrupted or destroyed in that bodily being. Therefore the human soul is the substantial form of the living human body, that is, of the man.

Every bodily actuality is made of prime matter and substantial form. Further, every living body has its life-principle as its substantial form. For the life-principle is the thing which constitutes the living body in its complete specific nature. Since the life-principle is the substantial form in every living body, the human life-principle (or human soul) is the substantial form in the human living body.

There can be, of course, no question here of the substantial character of the form which makes the living body human. We have already proved that the human soul is a substance, incomplete in point of species, although complete in point of substantiality. For the rest, no accidental form could bring substantial determinateness to any essence, nor could the removal of an accidental form induce, of itself, a substantial change in the body which loses that form. Yet the human substance is essentially and substantially changed the instant a man dies; that is, the instant the soul departs. Therefore the human soul is not an accidental form. It remains that it must be the substantial form of the body which it actualizes in essence and nature.

We shall presently see that man has only one soul (for all he has three grades of life) and this one soul is the spiritual or rational soul. Man, therefore, is rightly defined as a rational animal. For man is an animal organism, and man has reason or is rational. This definition of man as a rational animal is called a metaphysical definition. For a definition expresses an essence; it names the elements or parts of that essence; and the parts here named are not natural or physical parts which can actually be separated one from another; the “parts” here mentioned (i. e., “rationality” and “animality”) are realities which the mind understands to be present, but which do not suffer physical partition; the parts here named are metaphysical. If you wish to mention the physical and separable parts of a man, and to express or explain his essence thereby, you have a physical definition of man. Thus, the familiar definition given in the little catechism is the physical definition of man, viz., “man is a creature composed of body and soul…”

b) Results of the Union

The results of the union of soul and body in man are manifold. Here we are to consider three important ones: (z) A man is constituted by this union as a single essence and nature with the operations of three kinds of living beings. In other words, a man, although he has vegetal, sentient, and rational operations, has only one soul. (2) Each man has his own individual soul; he is not a mere sharer in a kind of universal humanity. (5) Soul and body exercise a mutual influence.

1, A man has only one soul. We have seen that the human soul is the substantial form of the living human body. But man has three grades of life: he is nourished, grows, propagates his kind, and in this he is like a plant. He has sensation, appetition, and locomotion, and in this he is like a brute animal. He has understanding and will, and these are his distinctive specific faculties. Has man then three souls, a vegetal soul, a sentient soul, and a rational soul? Or has he only one ? The answer is that man has only one soul, and this one soul is the rational spiritual soul, which is in man the principle of his threefold life.

Plato (5th century b. c.) taught that man has a triple soul: an intellectual or rational soul, seated in the brain; a sentient soul situated in the heart, and a vegetal soul in the abdomen. Certain philosophers of the later Middle Ages,—like William of Ockham (1280- 1348) and Peter Gassendi (1592-1655),—taught that a man has two souls, one rational, and the other vegetal-sentient. During the last two centuries some philosophers and scientists have advanced a two-soul theory which assigns to man one vegetal soul, and one that is sentient-rational. The three-soul doctrine is known as tridynamism; the two-soul theory is called duo dynamism; and the doctrine which we here defend, that man has but one soul, is known as monodynamism. These terms derive from the Greek word dynamis “power,” and the numeral words treis or tria “three,” duo “two,” and monos “only, alone, single.”

Sometimes the more modern type of duodynamism (which assigns to man a vegetal soul and one that is sentient-rational) is called vitalism. And monodynamism is frequently called animism. Vitalism comes from the Latin vita “life” or vitalis “pertaining to life” and literally means the doctrine which defends the existence of a vital principle over and above the mechanical and physico-chemical forces which are observed in bodies. Animism comes from the Latin anima “soul,” and literally means the doctrine that there is a soul in man, that is, a rational spiritual soul and no other. But the terms vitalism and animism are to be used with great caution for they are capable of varying and even entirely unrelated interpretations. Thus in our day vitalism is often used as synonymous with animism, and yet the terms were originally used to indicate opposed doctrines, viz., a plural-soul theory and a single-soul theory. Again, the term animism is used to designate a doctrine far removed from the domain of psychology; it indicates a debased form of religion which amounts to ancestor worship.

Now, the human soul is united with the body as its substantial form. We cannot admit a plurality of substantial forms in a single bodily subtsance. But to admit the existence of a plurality of souls in the human organism is to admit a plurality of substantial forms in the one bodily substance. Man, if he had three souls or two, would be an aggregate of substances, and not a single substance. But the testimony of consciousness is altogether imperative and inescapable in its urgency against such a possibility. Man is inevitably aware of the fact that the self is a single self; that it is the same substantial being which feels and reasons, which grows and wills. Therefore there is a single unifying and determining principle which is the basic and ultimate determinant of the human essence and nature. There is, in a word, only one soul or substantial form in a man, and not a plurality of souls. And, manifestly, the soul which makes a man a man and distinguishes him substantially from all other bodily substances is the rational soul. The vegetal soul would not differentiate man from plants; the sentient soul would not differentiate him from brute animals. The rational soul, which we have proved to be simple and spiritual and immortal, is the ultimate human determining principle. Man has one soul. It is the rational soul.

St. Thomas Aquinas, in his book Summa Contra Gentiles,—a summary of doctrine written to controvert mistaken pagan philosophy and theology,—says that when once a thing is constituted in its complete essence and nature, it takes on no new form except in an accidental way (for if it were to receive a new substantial form, this would replace the one already there, and the essence would no longer be the complete essence it was, but a new essence). And a thing received or “taken on” accidentally is something outside the established essence which receives it. If, then, the vegetal life-principle is the substantial form of a body, that body is and remains a plant, and to conceive of a super added sentient soul or rational soul or both, would leave the body still a plant and nothing but a plant. However, one cannot conceive of a super-added soul which leaves the original soul still in occupation. One cannot conceive of a soul in an accidental capacity; for a soul as such is a substantial form, and it gives substantial determinateness and essential character to that with which it is conjoined. We must, therefore, reject as impossible the plurality-of-souls theory.

We have already noticed the interaction and interdependence (rightly understood) of the three sorts of operations and operating powers observable in a man. There would be no conceivable explanation of this harmonious interaction, and this simultaneous accord of the human functions, if there were three souls, or two, in the same human body. Why should not the several souls act in utter independence of one another? Why should their several types of operation come into activity at the same instant and cease at the same moment? Why should a man not die as a rational being and live on as a sentient being ? And, losing sentiency, why should a man at the same time lose his vegetal powers? Why should he not endure for a time as a plant? And why should not the plant life and the animal life die out of a man and leave him an inorganic body with a rational soul,—if such a thing were conceivable? For three souls are three substantial principles or forms; and three substantial forms are, by their very nature, three independent forms. The unified character of man’s operations excludes absolutely the possibility of a plurality of souls simultaneously actualizing the same human body. Man has but one soul. We have seen that this must be the rational, or specifically human, soul.

Now, how can the rational soul be the first principle of vegetal and sentient functions in man? How can a spirit be the principle of bodily operation? The difficulty is more apparent than real. For a higher power can possess all the perfection of a lower power, even of an essentially different kind of lower power, and can exercise the operations of the lower power virtually. The rational soul is, indeed, formally rational; that is, in itself as such it is a rational soul and not a vegetal or a sentient soul. Yet, actualizing an organism fitted structurally for vegetal and animal operations, the rational soul has the virtue or power of vitalizing the organism according to its connatural capacity for life-power and life-operations. The human soul is thus said to be formally rational, and virtually vegetal and sentient. Consider an analogy or two. The King of England appeared recently at naval maneuvers off Spithead as the Lord High Admiral of the British Navy. Being formally, so to speak, the king, he is virtually the lesser officer whose role he chooses to play. Again: the grown man has all the strength of the boy, and something more. The man can lift all the weights which the boy can lift, and more too. Once more: Professor Jones, who lectures on metaphysics at the university, may come home and play nursery games with his babies. The babies cannot, one surmises, lecture on metaphysics at the university. The lower power requisite for nursery games does not include the higher power required for lecturing on metaphysics. But the power for lecturing on metaphysics may well include, and indeed should include, the power to appreciate the charm of simple and innocent entertainment; certainly it can include the lower power, as the admirable professor amply demonstrates. And so can the higher vital principle exercise, in an organism, the lower operations for which that organism is connaturally fitted. The analogies we have employed are admittedly very crude and very defective, yet they may serve to stir a thought for all that.

Reasoning sheerly from the impossibility of three substantial forms simultaneously actualizing a single organism; considering the impossibility of a substantial form existing in an organism as a mere accidental form; noticing the wondrous harmony and unity in the human functions of the three vital orders; weighing the fact that a superior substantial form may virtually exercise the operations of inferior forms; we are forced to the conclusion that there is in man one only soul and that this is the rational soul, which we have already proved to be a simple, spiritual, immortal substance. This one substantial soul is, in each man, the substantial first principle of all his vital activity.

2. Each man has his own individual soul. Not only have there been mistaken philosophers who would dower a man with more souls than he could possibly possess; there have also been philosophers who would not let a man have his own soul, but gave only one to the whole human race, and let each man participate in its service, as a million men walk in the light of one common sun, each employing its service to his own ends. Such was the doctrine of A verroes (d. 1198), an Arabian philosopher who lived in Spain, and whose Arabic name was Ibn-Roschd. But the generality of philosophers has always agreed with the generality of humankind that every man has his own individual soul and is not a mere sharer in a kind of universal human life.

The question is not without its interest and intrigue. It is easy enough to see that each man is individual. In these days of thumb-printing and microscopic identification, we are all familiar with the truth that no two human beings are perfectly alike even in minute bodily particulars. But the soul is a spirit, and a spirit cannot be “individuated” by size or sex or nationality; nor can it be photographed or required to record some sort of spiritual thumb-print. Matter as marked by quantity (or simply “quantified matter”) is the principle of individuation; it is that whereby one individual is known as an individual, as differentiated from other individuals of the same specific nature as itself. But the form, that is, the substantial form, is the principle of specification; it is that whereby a being is actualized in its proper essence or species. Now, Tom and John and Mary and Helen are manifestly different individual persons. But they are not different in point of their species as human beings. And it is the soul which makes each of these persons a human being. But the body is part and parcel of a man; it is an essential element; it contributes something, when present in its quantified actualness, to the composite which we call a man. The prime matter of the body, quantified under the actualness which comes with the actualizing form, is that which marks the individual man as this man and not that, as John and not Helen, as Mary and not Tom. For all the individual determinants are, in final analysis, material. An old Latin couplet lists the “individuating marks” of a bodily reality, and we make a free translation of it in the following bit of doggerel:

Form, shape, place, time,

Tribe, country, name;

In no two cases

Are all the same.

In other words, no bodily reality (and man is the bodily reality here under consideration) can be exactly identified with another such reality on the score of form (accidental form, such as structural form or morphological type); shape (individual variety of structural form; also condition due to age, health, etc.); place of existence and time of existence; ancestry; native land; name. No two human beings can be the same on all these scores. And, in consequence, we distinguish one individual from another. And all these points of individuation have reference to the material or bodily being of the individuated men. Now, when it comes to a spirit, we cannot apply our individuating test; for a spirit has nothing material about it. How is Tom’s soul to be distinguished from Mary’s soul? You may say that the question is idle so far as living human beings are concerned, for these always are bodily, and the soul is substantially united with the body to constitute each individual person, and shares, so to speak, the individuation which is recognized in the bodily element of the human composite. But the philosopher is not concerned with that alone which is recognizable in the present state of human living beings. He wishes to know whether, as a fact, he can prove that “his soul is his own.”

Now, the human soul is the substantial form of the human body. But one and the same substantial form cannot be found in a plurality of individuals. If it could, then the individuals would be no true individuals at all; they would be contradictions unto themselves. If John and Mary and Tom and Helen are individuals (as no one doubts) and yet have one common substantial form, it follows that John and Mary and Tom and Helen are one undivided substance, and are not individuals after all. Each individual is what it is; it has its own being; and the principle of its being (as of all its fundamental actualness) is its substantial form. But the being of Tom is Tom’s being, not Mary’s. Tom is born and grows, and is sick or well, and lives and dies, independently of Mary and Mary’s growth and health and life and death. Yet it could not be so, were their life-principle, soul, or substantial form one and the same form. It follows necessarily that each human individual has his own one soul and is not constituted and actualized by a general or common human substantial form.

Again we may call upon the testimony of consciousness. Each human being is aware, inevitably and necessarily aware, that he thinks his own thoughts, makes up his own mind, does his own reasoning. These functions are not bodily; they are the operations of the spiritual soul which is the life-principle and the substantial form of a man. But if there were only one human soul for all of us, or if there were only one human soul for any group of individuals, this independence of spiritual experience would be utterly impossible. There are, therefore, as many souls as there are human beings.

Each man has his own soul. But how is the soul of one man marked, so to speak, as distinct from other souls? Let us employ an analogy. Conceive of pure whiteness (not the varying shades of grayish white that pass by the name) in a bank of snow, a sheet of paper, and a mass of chalk. The whiteness is absolutely pure, and in all three substances it appears the same identical color. How do we distinguish the whiteness of the snow from that of the other substances? Precisely in this, that the whiteness of the snow is the whiteness of the snow, and not the whiteness of the paper or of the chalk. Similarly, the whiteness of the paper is its own, and is not to be referred to the snow or the chalk. And so with the whiteness of the chalk; it belongs to the chalk, not to the other substances. Although the whiteness is exactly the same grade or degree, and the same essential kind of thing, its individual applications, so to speak, are distinct, because of the distinction of the several bodies to which the whiteness is ascribed. Now apply the analogy. Each human soul is, as a fact, the soul of one individual man, and it bears a real relationship to the body of that man, the body which it in-forms and actualizes as a human organism. And this relationship (although a thing extrinsic to the soul itself) is individual in each soul, inasmuch as it refers each soul to its own individual body and no other. In such a relationship we find the “mark” which distinguishes soul from soul. It is theological doctrine,—and not psychological opinion, although psychology finds the view wholly acceptable,—that in the life beyond the grave, before the resurrection of the body, human souls are distinguished one from another by the extrinsic but real relationship which refers each soul to the one individual body which it once actualized and in-formed.

5. Soul and body exercise a mutual influence. We have spoken more than once of the harmonious interplay of vegetal, sentient, and rational operations in a man. It is necessary to raise the point for further consideration. We have to dispose of some faculty notions on the subject, and to determine the character of the efficacy of soul and body in their interaction or mutual influence.

Plato and Descartes denied the influence of body upon soul; and the only influence of soul upon body which they recognized was conceived of as local movement, such as a rower might give to his boat. The doctrine is logical enough in view of the premise which both Plato and Descartes assumed, viz., that the union of soul and body is not substantial but accidental. This premise, however, is, as we have proved, a false premise. And the conclusion here drawn from it is, as we shall see, likewise false.

Nicole Malebranche (1638-1715) believed that it is impious and false to assume the existence of any activity except divine activity. He denied all activity in creatures, and hence denied the proper activity of man, and the influence of soul upon body and body upon soul. Malebranche explained the vital operations in this way: God produces an effect,—in the vegetal order, let us say. But this effect, since it takes place in a balanced organism which is of God’s own making, disposes the sentient and rational parts of man to exhibit a function. It does not produce the operation in the sentient or rational part, it only disposes these for the operation and sets up for such operation an occasion, which God takes and so produces the operation. This doctrine is called occasionalism; it is a fantastic hypothesis wholly unacceptable. First of all, it makes nonsense of the substantial union of body and soul, and turns these two elements of a man into a pair of machines arranged in a kind of accidental accord, so that when God uses one as the instrument of action, the other is disposed for a similar and harmonious use. Secondly, the doctrine limits the infinite power of God, and makes it impossible for Him to create anything that shall have power to act or operate as a secondary cause (since, indeed, God is the only Primary Cause). Thirdly, the doctrine is apt to lead one to a belief in pantheism (the theory that everything is part and parcel with the Deity), for if only God can act, the various active things about us may easily be conceived as mere parts or manifestations of God. Fourthly, the doctrine of Malebranche destroys human liberty, and takes from man all responsibility; for if man is not truly active, and not the cause of his actions, how shall he be held responsible for them? Lastly, the doctrine is wholly gratuitous, and has not the shadow of a reasonable argument to offer in its own support.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716) conceived of body and soul in man as two clocks existing side by side and perfectly synchronized. God is the divine “clockmaker” who has set up these wondrous timepieces, and, by His eternally established plan for a harmonious universe, He keeps the clocks ticking and marking time in perfect accord. If one might conceive of any influence of one clock on the other, it would amount to this: that the movement or change of one clock is sufficient reason for a corresponding movement in the other, and the second movement actually concurs with the first by the force of the great law of the Creator which keeps the world in harmonious and unconflicting activity. This great law is called by Leibnitz the law of pre established harmony. It is manifested everywhere throughout the universe, in general as in detailed activities and operations; and so it is manifested in the relationship of soul and body and accounts for their so-called mutual influence. Manifestly, this doctrine falls under much the same condemnation as that which occasionalism deserves. The theory of Leibnitz would destroy the substantial union of body and soul, and set up in its stead an accidental disposition for agreement or cooperation between the essential elements of the living man. Further, this theory would entirely destroy human liberty and responsibility (and hence would destroy morality) by making all actions and operations the product of an inexorable pre-established law. Incidentally, the theory would make God the author of all actions, even those that are evil. And, since God, through the law of pre-established harmony, would be the only active power in the universe, this theory inclines the mind towards pantheism, the most horrible and degraded of all false doctrines. Finally, the theory is gratuitous, and instead of explaining the mutual influence of soul and body, it explains it away and denies it.

A doctrine similar in many respects to that of Leibnitz is the theory of Friedrich Paulsen (1846-1908) who taught that the sentient and the intellectual operations in man proceed, without any real connection, in parallel series. Instead of presenting the semblance of two clocks, the soul and body are rather two rails of a locomotive-track over which the only existing energy (a universal will-force, or world-soul) moves to manifest what we call the active life of a man. Paulsen’s doctrine, in general, is called pan-psychism (from the Greek pan “all,” and psyche “soul”; for everything is but the manifestation of a universal will-force or world-soul). In special application to man and his operations, this doctrine is called psycho-physical parallelism (from the Greek psyche “soul” and physis “nature”) to indicate that the universal soul and man’s bodily nature are kept in parallel and harmonious activity. We need not pause upon this strange doctrine for a longer space than is needed to point out that it involves the self-contradictory hypothesis of pantheism, destroys all human individuality, denies the substantial union of body and soul, and contradicts reason and factual experience. Another exponent of the theory of psycho-physical parallelism was Gustav Fechner (1801-1887), the pioneer par excellence in formulating the “new psychology” of specialized observation, and application of psychological principles in human relationships and in the departments of human activity, such as commerce, medicine, education, vocational guidance, etc. With Fechner psychology began to emerge from the laboratory and to take up its work in school and hospital, in office and on the street corner. Other names associated with the theory here considered are Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) and Friedrich Jodi (1849-1914).

There is a theory called Behaviorism, fathered and fostered by our contemporaries, Drs. Watson and Dorsey, which destroys the interaction of the vital operations and the substantial union of soul and body by ruling out of account all the data of consciousness. Behaviorism holds that all man’s actions are no more than the response to stimuli, and a man is no more truly active on his own account than a warping board that twists under the influence of the hot sun, or than a lump of coal that disintegrates and sends off smoke when thrown into the fire. Of course, if we deny consciousness and its proffered evidence, we can prove nothing in any field, least of all can we attach value to the conscious experience which manifests the mutual relation and influence of body and soul in a man. Behaviorism is self-contradictory. It tells us that there is no such thing as consciousness or mind, and asks us to be conscious of that fact and to bear it in mind. Behaviorism is, to judge it on its own principles, but a warped reaction to some unknown stimulus. A behaviorist does not know “how he got that way,” nor has he any means of knowing what his way is, since he is wholly unconscious.

There is another doctrine, favored by some of the followers of John Locke (1632-1704) and the mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), which exaggerates the influence of the body upon the soul, and makes this direct. Yet the body, being material, cannot directly influence that which it cannot meet in quantitative contact, and, of course, the soul is without quantity and cannot receive a purely quantitative impression in a direct manner.

The true doctrine on the mutual influence of body and soul in man may be summed up as follows: (r) The soul influences the body formally and gives it its being and its capacity for vital operation. This is certain because the soul is the substantial form of the body; it is “the first act of the physical organic body.” (ii) The body acts materially with the soul, or influences the soul materially, inasmuch as it concurs with the soul, or suffers the soul-action, in establishing human nature. (Hi) Once substantially united, soul and body exercise a mutual influence. The soul is the root-principle of all the vital operations in man, vegetal, sentient, rational. And we have seen how these exercise a mutual influence. A vegetal disorder, for instance, can impede rational activity; a mental derangement can have an effect upon the organism; and it is a commonplace that when a man’s bodily condition is what it should be, when he is “in the pink of condition,” he can do his best mental or rational work. Conversely,—as any nurse or doctor can testify, —the freedom of the mind from worry or distress is a tremendous aid in restoring proper bodily functions, and in helping the body to react properly to the treatment which aims to restore its integrity and power, (iv) The influence of soul upon body is physical and direct; it is what philosophers call a physical per se influence. The influence of body upon soul is physical, but not direct or per se. For the body has, in itself, no power of direct influence except in the quantitative relation; the body per se is not active but passive. It is the soul that is the seat of vital activity in bodily man. Hence, while there is unquestionably an influence working from body to soul, the body, to exercise such influence, must first be alive, must first be vitalized by the soul. In the last analysis, it is the soul which is the root-source of bodily activity, even of such as turns its influence back upon the soul. As Fr. Lortie remarks,—in his Element a Philo-sophiae Christianae,—“it would be truer to say that the soul acts on itself through the mediation of the body” than to say that the body acts on the soul.

c) Place of the Soul

We are here to determine the locus or “seat” of the soul in man. The soul is said to be located in the body. Therefore it is an interesting and important question which asks where precisely the soul is situated, and what is the nature of its placing or location. We shall find that the soul is everywhere in the living body, and is not to be assigned to head or heart or trunk or member, to the exclusion of other parts of the body. The soul is in the body and is not limited to one organ in the body. Further the whole soul is in every part of the living body; every part that shares the life of the body has the life-principle of the body. And since the life-principle in man is indivisible and uncomposed, it cannot be partly in one place and partly in another; wherever it is, it is in its entirety. There is no contradiction here, as we shall presently see. First, however, we must determine how a thing can be in a place, and how one thing can be in another thing.

A thing that is in a place in such wise that its bodily dimensions correspond with the bodily dimensions of the spot where it exists, is said to be circumscribed (from Latin circum “around,” and scribere “to write”) by these dimensions. One might use in illustration the child’s familiar action of placing a round object, such as a coin, upon a sheet of paper, and drawing a line about it with a pencil. The circle on the paper indicates the outline of the coin’s dimensions, and also the outline of that area of paper on which the coin rests; these two outlines or dimensions are coincident; the coin is located on a spot that is “written around” or circumscribed by the common dimensions of the coin and the area of paper on which it rests. To be thus in a place is to be located circumscriptively. Manifestly, only a body can be in a place in this manner, for only a body has the external material dimensions that can be “circumscribed.” We know, therefore, at once, that the soul is not in the body cir cums crip lively, for the soul is not a body but a spirit.

A reality can be in a place, or in another thing, in other ways. It can be there operatively if it exercises its power in a literally located (i. e., circumscriptively located) body. Thus the life-principle in any living body is located, is in the place, which is occupied by the living body itself. The life, and the life-principle, of the tree is where the tree is. You cannot measure the location of the life-principle or the life of the tree with ruler or tape-line. But you can measure the tree so, and where the tree is, there is its life and life-principle, not indeed circumscriptively but operatively: the life and life-principle operate in the located tree. Similarly, the substantial form of any body is where that body is. Wherever the block of marble is it is marble; its “marble-ness” is, so to speak, “located.” This sort of location or place is called informative, for the substantial form in-forms the matter and makes it the specific kind of matter that it is: marble, in our example, and not wax, nor lead, nor mud, nor any other substance except marble. Accidental forms also in-form a body and are “located” where that body is. Thus the hardness or the roughness of the marble block is located where the block is located. Forms are located informatively; they are informatively in the place occupied by the body which they in-form. Created forms which are made to inform bodily reality are also said to be “located” definitively in the body or bodies which they in-form; that is to say, they are definitely and definitively in such bodies and exercise their effect there and nowhere else at the same time. Thus the substantial form of this marble block is here in the block, not in another block or in another substance; and the hardness or roughness of the block is not the hardness or roughness of something else.

We assert that the human soul is in the human body informatively, operatively and definitively. Further the whole soul is in every living part of the living body.

Plato taught that the rational soul is in the brain; the old Greek Stoics (4th and 3rd centuries b. c.) thought that the soul is in the heart; Descartes believed it to be located in the pineal gland (a tiny gland in the brain). These opinions arose, of course, out of the fundamental mistake of making the union of soul and body an accidental union and not a substantial one, as we have proved it to be in fact. We notice the following points of true doctrine:

I. The entire soul is in the body taken as a whole. The whole body is alive; and it is alive by reason of its life-principle. Therefore where the life-principle is not found, life is not found. But life is found in the whole organism. To state the same doctrine in different terms: the soul is the substantial form of the body and gives it being and character as an organic human body. But the whole body has the being and character of an organic human body. Therefore the whole soul is in the whole body. The entire body lives by reason of its one life-principle or substantial form which is, to speak metaphorically, “coextensive” with the body which it in-forms.

2, The entire soul is in every part of the living body. The soul has no parts, and hence cannot be partly here and partly there. It cannot be conceived as a kind of internal shadow-man which maintains a “shape” inside a human being like the outer shape of the body: having arms inside the arms and head inside the head, and so on. Wherever the soul is, it must all be there. It is simple and indivisible. Therefore the entire soul is in every part of the living body. The student will probably recall the sneering Dr. Wilson of Canon Sheehan’s Luke Delmege. When this present question was discussed at a dinner-table, and the conclusion we have reached was enunciated, the Doctor pulled a hair from his head and held it in the candle-flame, saying, “My fluttering soul, farewell!” Of course, the Doctor merely aired his ignorance, if not his inability to understand the terms of the discussion in which he had borne a scornful part. Any member of the body which is severed from the unity of the organism ceases to be in-formed by the substantial form of that organism. Therefore, although it is literally true that the soul is in hands and feet as well as in head or heart, the soul is not cut or divided when hand or foot is severed. The severed member is withdrawn from the in-forming action of the soul; it is substantially changed; it is really no longer a hand or foot at all. Of course, Dr. Wilson’s foolish gesture was born of his failure to understand the “location” which we have called informative, definitive, and operative; the Doctor could grasp nothing but circumscription as the meaning of location, and circumscription affects bodily beings only.

5. The soul does not exercise all the operations of which it is the root-principle in each and every member of the body. The soul is, indeed, present in its essence in each and every part of the living body. But the operations of the organism (which is material, and composed of parts) are diversified, and the vegetal and sentient operations require their several distinct organs. One does not hear with the toes or see with the ears or taste with the eyes or digest food with the nose. The one soul is the root-principle of all vital activities, but it exercises its power through different and differently located parts of the organism. We may say, indeed, in a sort of poetical way, that the soul is chiefly in the head and the heart. But this statement is not literally true. It is justified only in view of the fact that the chief organ of sentient life is the brain, and the chief organ of vegetal life is the heart.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have learned the meaning of union, and have defined substatntial union and accidental union. We have seen that substantial union is simply substantial or it is personal. We have proved that the union of soul and body in man is a personal substantial union, and that the human soul is the substantial form of the living body. We have studied the results of this union, and have seen that, because of it, man is necessarily a one-souled creature, and the single soul is the rational soul which is, in each individual man, his own individual soul, and which is the root-source in him of all his vital operations, vegetal, sentient, and rational. As a further result of the substantial union of soul and body in a man, we have noticed the mutual influence exercised by body and soul, and we have determined the nature and the mode of this influence. We have discussed the question of the location or seat of the soul in the human organism, and have learned that the one soul of man (which is the rational spiritual soul and the substantial form of man) is wholly in the whole body and wholly in each part of the living body (by a totality of essence), but that it does not exercise all the operations of which it is first-principle in every part of the organism (it is not everywhere in the body by a totality of power or operation). We have discerned the manner of the soul’s location in the body as non-circumscriptive (for the soul is a spirit and not a body with dimensions), informative, definitive, and operative.