210 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



after his benign countenance had faded from view. His face- 

 less grin is a fitting comment on the neo-Kantian folly of 

 those who, as L. Chiesa says, "speak of phenomena without 

 substance, of sensations without subject, of thoughts without 

 the Ego, to which they belong, imitating in this way the poets, 

 who personify honor, virtue, beauty, etc. Now all this pro- 

 ceeds exclusively from a confusion of the subjective abstrac- 

 tion with the reality, and from the assumption that the phe- 

 nomenon, for example, exists without substance, because we 

 are able (by means of abstraction) to consider the former 

 independently of the latter." ("La Base del Realismo," p. 39.) 

 In other words, the mind is capable of separating (represen- 

 tatively, of course, and not physically) its own phenomena 

 from itself, but this is no warrant for transferring the abstrac- 

 tions thus formed from the ideal, to the real, order of things. 



So much for the soul's substantiality, but it is a simple, as 

 well as a substantial, principle, that is to say, it is inextended, 

 uncompounded, incorporeal, and not dispersed into quantita- 

 tive parts or particles. In other words, it is not a composite 

 of constituent elements or complex of integral parts, but 

 something really distinct from the body and pertaining to a 

 different order of reality than matter. This, as we have seen, 

 does not necessarily mean that it is immaterial, in the sense of 

 being intrinsically independent of matter. In a word, sim- 

 plicity does not involve spirituality (absolute immateriality). 

 Not only plant and animal souls, but even mineral entelechies, 

 are simple, in the negative sense of excluding extension, cor- 

 poreality and dispersal into quantitative parts, but they 

 are, none the less, intrinsically dependent on matter and 

 are therefore material principles. 



That the soul or vital entelechy is really distinct from its 

 material substrate is apparent from the perennial process of 

 metabolism enacted in the living organism. In this process, 

 matter is the variant and entelechy or specific type is the 

 constant. Hence the two principles are not only distinct, but 

 separable. Moreover, the soul's role as a binding-principle 



