CHAPTER VI.

THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT.

"The truth sooner emerges from error than from confusion."— BACON.

$ 1. THE METAPHYSICAL ARGUMENT.

THE attempt to prove the soul immortal from its very nature is supposed to be so generally abandoned as worthy only of the Schoolmen, that an examination of it in any form may seem gratuitous or invidious. We shall examine it, nevertheless, for three reasons: 1st, because the subtlety of this argument often attracts the most acute minds; 2dly, because its traditional force in the community is not yet spent; 3dly, a fair view of the subject may correct the errors produced by reäction.

Augustine, shortly before his conversion to Christianity, wrote a book of sixteen reasons for the proper immortality of the soul. Among them are the following: The soul is a subject of knowledge, which is ever the same; and of reason, which changes not. As from body can not be taken away that by which it is body, so neither from mind that by which it is mind. The soul is life; hence it can not want life. No essence is contrary to the truth, whereby the mind is what it is.

We are not surprised that in his "Retractations" the more sober and practical Augustine should speak of this book as obscure and perplexed, so that he himself could scarcely comprehend it; but we are surprised that he did not wholly abandon and condemn the entire argument. We can explain this fact only by adverting to the original arguments which still pleased many converted philosophers as much as they had been admired by Cicero. Here is one of them, from the Phædo: "Does the soul always bring life to whatever it occupies? Indeed it does.

Is there, now, any thing contrary to life, or not? There is, death. But the soul will never admit the contrary of that which it brings with it, as has already been allowed. Most assuredly. Be it so; but what do we call that which does not admit death? Immortal." The argument is as good as if one should say a given wheel will ever exist because it is essentially round. It is the nature of a thing to be what it is. And so things are eternized by their definitions.

We may excuse such puerilities because they were indulged beyond the dark ages, on which, perhaps, they throw some light. But what shall we say if we find the old sophism, — that, since motion must be either where a thing is or where it is not, therefore nothing can move, revamped on our side of the dark ages to show that the soul can not die? Yet this is done, in a book lately very famous, thus: "The power which is supposed to reduce the soul to a point of annihilation, must either exist in this given point, or it must not; if it exist, we have not yet arrived at that point which describes a nonentity; and where nonentity is not, annihilation can never be. And if it exist in this point, the soul can never be annihilated by its influence; and in either case the soul is immortal." Again we are told: "If the soul be annihilated, it must be either by something which is in existence, or by something which is not. But that which is in existence can never produce what is physically contrary to itself, and that which has no existence can never act." So there can be, perhaps, no physical pain. And again: "That which produces a nonentity is not power, but nothing." Wherefore the Creator should take heed not to reduce an atom to nonentity, lest He should prove himself to be nothing.

Descending from these metaphysic clouds, we meet the more common argument from the uncompounded nature of the soul. It is a simple substance, not subject to disintegration, indivisible. This hope of an after life is as old as Socrates and Cicero, who should be welcome to it in so far it gave them comfort. Later criticism makes appeal to the most obstinate dogmatist, whether

1 Samuel Drew, On the Soul, Part II. c. 1, § 6; cited as arguments worthy of consideration by Luther Lee, On the Soul, c. 2, § 1.

the proof of the continued existence of the soul after death derived from the simplicity of its substance . has ever been able

to pass beyond the limits of the schools, to penetrate the public mind, or to exercise the slightest influence on its convictions. "1 With a brighter light to illuminate the unseen world, we can afford to recognize that this argument would also prove the atom indestructible, and creation, as well as un-creation, impossible.

Not only is the argument worthless; the fact of the soul's uncompounded nature is not proven, perhaps cannot be. Immaterial substance may be organic, according to some law of spiritual being. All analogies look that way. The endlessly varied operations of the mind show a structure marvellously complex. If it be a homogeneous substance, its constitution is wonderfully intricate. If without parts, it is exquisitively framed in the harmony of its faculties. Though it can not be weighed by ounces or measured by inches, it may yet be really greater or less in its quantity of being; how else, regarding the soul as a pure entelechy, shall we avoid the common notion that all souls are originally alike, of equal capacity and power? How shall we explain the different tempers or the acquired habits of human mind? Are we sure men's natures do not modify their very being? If the soul can not be disintegrated, it may be deranged; and while this derangement lies deeper than our anatomy or chemistry, it may be no less a symptom of decay, a prelude of final dissolution. Without annihilation of substance the soul may perish from being. There may be immaterial substance unwrought into personal or individual being.

Our theory of the soul's nature will of course affect our view of its origin. Is it given to the body by an immediate creation, or by delegated power? Is the human species reproductive of its kind, no less than the brute? Is not the dignity of man's nature concerned here? 2

1 Kant, Pure Reason, Pref. p. xxxvi. Meiklejohn's trans.

2 The Traducian theory of the soul's origin is now respectable. It is eloquently asserted by R. S. Storrs, Constitution of the Soul, pp. 47-56, Compare Prof. Chace, Bib. Sacra, Nov. 1848, pp. 648, 649; - Nevin, Mystical Presence, pp. 164, 165; - and medical writers generally, not the materialist or skeptical alone.

We have partly anticipated the argument from the immaterial nature of the soul. The fact we readily admit, but granting even that spiritual substance is uncompounded and cannot be dissolved, it may yet be annihilated by the same power that created it. And we have already seen how the argument proves too much, so that, to save the dishonor of too much company in our immortality, some would have us call the brute soul imperishable but not immortal. Some men of large heart allow the conclusion to which the argument leads, and welcome all living creatures to immortal life.1 Bishop Butler accepts the inference, meeting the prejudice that may threaten our dignity with the remark that "the natural immortality of brutes does not in the least imply that they are endowed with any latent capacities of a rational or moral nature." It is better to waive the entire argument, with a careful writer, who says: "As to the pretended demonstration of immortality drawn from the assumed simplicity and indestructibility of the soul as an immaterial substance, they appear altogether unconclusive; or, if conclusive, then such as must be admitted to apply, with scarcely diminished force, to all sentient orders; and it must be granted that whatever has felt and acted spontaneously must live again and forever."

It is here worthy of notice that in the New Testament a distinction is sometimes made between the regenerate and the unregenerate, as if the former possessed soul and spirit, and the latter, soul only. Thus Jude speaks of a certain class of men as psychical (vxikoí, soulish), not having spirit (veiμa, ver. 19), Christ speaks of that which is born of the flesh as flesh, and that which is born of the spirit as spirit (John iii. 6). Paul calls the

1 Duns Scotus, (see Leibnitz, Théodicée, Part I. § 89); Chev. Ramsay, Nat. and Rev. Rel. b. 5, a doctrine of metempsychosis; - R. Dean, Essay on the Future Life of the Brute Creatures (Lond. 1768); J. Wesley, Serm. on Rom. viii. 19-22; -A. Clarke, Comm. on Rom. ch. viii;- Tennyson, In Memoriam. liii, liv.; T. Parker, Theism, p. 187:- Agassiz, Nat. Hist. of the U. S., I. 64-66.

2 Analogy, Part I. c. 2.

8 I. Taylor, Physical Theory, c. 17. The argument from the soul's immateriality is declined by Werdermann, Theodicee 1. 16;- Secrétan, Phil. de la Liberté, Legon 31;- Knapp, Chr. Theol. § 51;-Chalmers, Inst. of Theol. b. 2, c. 3;-T. M. Post, New Englander, Feb. 1856.

present body psychical (vvxikóv), and the immortal body spiritual (πVEνμATIKÓν, 1 Cor. xv. 44, 46). And writing to the Thessalonians he desires that their "whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Thes. v. 23).

In these and other passages the term "spirit" seems to denote more than temper or disposition. It is as if something, either substance or quality, were added to the being of those who are born of God, so that they are said to be born of an incorruptible seed (1 Pet. i. 23; 1 John iii. 9) and to be "made partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. i. 4), while others are compared to irrational animals that shall utterly perish in their own corruption (2 Pet. ii. 12). Speculate as we may about the nature of this difference, we need not be surprised to find that the early Christians made much account of it in their hope of immortality. And Irenæus goes so far as to say that by the spirit the man becomes spiritual and complete; without this the soul and body are an incomplete man; such persons are called "flesh and blood," and it is said of them, "let the dead bury their dead,” because they have not the spirit which vivifies the man; but those who have this are "justly called men, pure, spiritual, living unto God." This distinction is recognized but misapplied by modern philosophers, who say that man differs from the brute in having a spirit in addition to soul and body, and who assume that all men have spirit and are immortal.2

§ 2.

1

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.

Of this there are two forms: 1st, that founded on the conceptions of the pure reason and the elements of human personality; · 2d, that derived from the manifold operations of the understanding.

1. By the conceptions of pure reason we mean the ideas of time and space, the finite and the infinite, the beautiful, the true and the good, the right and the wrong, and other categories or

1 Contra Hæres. 1. 5, cc. 6-9.

2 Thus Schubert, Geschichte der Seele.