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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



anything but a complete anatomy and biology. 

 To explain the activity of the intellect as included 

 in the activity of the body, is as idle as to explain 

 the activity of the body as included in the motion 

 of solid bodies. And it is equally idle to explain 

 the activity of the will, or the emotions, as in- 

 cluded in the theory of the intellect. All the 

 spheres of human life are logically separable t 

 though they are organically interdependent. Now 

 the combined activity of the human powers or- 

 ganized around the highest of them we call the 

 soul. The combination of intellectual and moral 

 energy which is the source of religion, we call 

 the spiritual life. The explaining the spiritual 

 side of life by physical instead of moral and 

 spiritual reasoning, we call materialism. 



The consensus of the human faculties, which 

 we call the soul, comprises all sides of human 

 nature according to one homogeneous theory. 

 But the intuitional methods ask us to insert into 

 the midst of this harmonious system of parts, as 

 an underlying explanation of it, an indescribable 

 entity ; and to this hypothesis, since the days of 

 Descartes (or possibly of Aquinas), the good old 

 word soul has been usually restricted. How and 

 when this entity ever got into the organism, how 

 it abides in it, what are its relations to it, how it 

 acts on it, why and when it goes out of it — all is 

 mystery. We ask for some evidence of the exist- 

 ence of any such entity ; the answer is, we must 

 imagine it in order to explain the organism. We 

 ask what are its methods, its laws, its affinities ; 

 we are told that it simply has none, or none know- 

 able. We ask for some description of it, of its 

 course of development, for some single fact about 

 it, statable in terms of the rest of our knowl- 

 edge; the reply is — mystery, absence of every- 

 thing so statable or cognizable, a line of poetry, 

 or an ejaculation. It has no place, no matter, 

 no modes, neither evolution nor decay ; it is with- 

 out body, parts, or passions ; a spiritual essence, 

 incommensurable, incomparable, indescribable. 

 Yet, with all this, it is, we are told, an entity, the 

 most real and perfect of all entities short of the 

 divine. 



If we ask why we are to assume the existence 

 of something of which we have certainly no direct 

 evidence, and which is so wrapped in mystery 

 that for practical purposes it becomes a nonentity, 

 we are told that we need to conceive it, because 

 a mere organism cannot act as we see the human 

 organism act. Why not ? They say there must 

 be a principle within as the cause of this life. 

 But what do we gain by supposing a " principle ? " 

 The " principle " only adds a fresh difficulty. Why 



should a " principle," or an entity, be more capa- 

 ble of possessing these marvelous human powers 

 than the human organism? Besides, we shall 

 have to imagine a " principle " to explain not only 

 why a man can feel affection, but also why a dog 

 can feel affection. If a mother cannot love her 

 child — merely qua human organism — unless her 

 love be a manifestation of an eternal soul, how 

 can a cat love her kittens — merely qua feline 

 organism — without an immaterial principle, or 

 soul ? Nay, we shall have to go on to invent a 

 principle to account for a tree growing, or a 

 thunder-storm roaring, and for every force of 

 Nature. Now this very supposition was made in 

 a way by the Greeks, and to some extent by 

 Aquinas, the authors of the vast substructure of 

 anima underlying all Nature, of which our human 

 soul is the fragment that alone survives. One 

 by one the steps in this series of hypothesis have 

 faded away. Greek and mediaeval philosophy 

 imagined that every activity resulted not from 

 the body which exhibited the activity, but from 

 some mysterious entity inside it. If marble was 

 hard, it had a "form " informing its hariness ; if 

 a blade of grass sprang up, it had a vegetative 

 spirit mysteriously impelling it; if a dog obeyed 

 his master, it had an animal spirit mysteriously 

 controlling its organs. The mediaeval physicists, 

 as Moliere reminds us, thought that opium in- 

 duced sleep quia est in co virtus dormiiiva. 

 Nothing was allowed to act as it did by its own 

 force or vitality. In every explanation of science 

 we were told to postulate an intercalary hypoth- 

 esis. Of this huge mountain of figment, the 

 notion of man's immaterial soul is the one feeble 

 residuum. 



Orthodoxy has so long been accustomed to 

 take itself for granted, that we are apt to forget 

 how very short a period of human history this 

 sublimated essence has been current. From 

 Plato to Hegel the idea has been continually 

 taking fresh shapes. There is not a trace of it 

 in the Bible in its present sense, and nothing in 

 the least akin to it in the Old Testament. Till 

 the time of Aquinas theories of a material soul, 

 as a sort of gas, were never eliminated ; and until 

 the time of Descartes, our present ideas of the 

 antithesis of soul and body were never clearly 

 defined. Thus the Bible, the Fathers, and the 

 mediaeval Church, as was natural when philos- 

 ophy was in a state of flux, all represented the 

 soul in very different ways ; and none of theso 

 ways were those of a modern divine. It is a 

 curious instance of the power of words that the 

 practical weight of the popular religion is now 



