202 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



case of such systems as the neo-vitalism of Driesch and the 

 spiritualism of Descartes. 



Summing up, therefore, we may say that the soul, like other 

 entelechies, is consubstantial with its material substrate, the 

 body. True it is more autonomous than are the inflexible 

 entelechies of inorganic nature, inasmuch as it is independent 

 of any given atom, molecule, or cell in the organic aggregate. 

 Such a degree of freedom, for example, is not possessed by 

 the most complex molecules, which show no other flexibility 

 than tautomerism, even this small readjustment involving a 

 change in their specificity. But this autonomy does not pre- 

 clude the essential dependence of the soul upon the body. 

 Generally speaking, the soul is incapable of existence apart 

 from its total substrate, the organism. We say, generally 

 speaking, because, as previously intimated, an exception must 

 be made in the case of the human soul, which, being, as we 

 shall see, a self-subsistent and spiritual entelechy, is by itself, 

 apart from its material substrate, a sufficient subject of 

 existence, and is therefore capable of surviving the dissolution 

 of its complementary principle, the organism. Nevertheless, 

 even in man, the soul forms one substance with the organism, 

 and the organism participates as a coefficient factor in all his 

 vital functions, both physiological and psychic, excluding only 

 the super organic or spiritual functions of rational thought and 

 volition, whose agent and recipient is the soul alone. In man, 

 then, soul and body unite to form a single substance, a single 

 nature, and a single person. Apart from the body, the human 

 soul is, indeed, a complete entity, in the sense that it is 

 capable of subsistence (independent existence) , but, in another 

 sense, it is not a complete entity, because apart from the 

 body it cannot constitute a complete nature or complete per- 

 sonality. It is this essential incompleteness of the discarnate 

 human soul that forms the natural basis of the Christian 

 doctrine of the Resurrection of the Dead. 



Here, however, it is important to note the difference be- 

 tween the hylomorphic spiritualism of Aristotle and the psy- 



