A handbook of Freethought : $b containing in condensed and systematized form a vast amount of evidence against the superstitious doctrines of Christianity
Religion
A handbook of Freethought : $b containing in condensed and systematized form a vast amount of evidence against the superstitious doctrines of Christianity
Christianity -- Controversial literature; Free thought
St. Hilary: (5th c.) There is nothing created which is not corporeal,
neither in heaven nor in earth, neither visible nor invisible;
all is formed of elements; and souls, whether they inhabit a body,
or are without a body, have always a corporeal substance.
Gregory Nazianzen: (4th c.) Soul, or spirit, is composed of two
properties--motion and diffusion.
Bishop Nemesius: (5th c.) The soul is an immaterial substance. It
is involved, as Plato taught, in eternal, self-produced motion,
from which the motion of the body is derived. The pre-existence of
the soul proves its supra-sensible character, and its immortality.
Faustus: (Bishop of Regium, in Gaul, A. D. 470.) All created things
are matter; the soul being composed of air, God alone is incorporeal.
Mamertus: (In reply to the bishop.) Man was made in the image of
God. Now, as there can be no likeness to God in matter, therefore
it must be found in the soul, therefore the soul is immaterial. The
soul is present in every part of the body as well as in the whole,
just as God is present in the whole universe, otherwise a part of
it would be lost when any portion of the body is cut off. The soul
is not contained in the body, but in reality contains it. Hence,
it must be immaterial, for no material substance can at once contain
the body and be within it as its animating principle.
Thomas Aquinas: (13th c.) The soul is the Actuality of body, as heat,
which is the source whence bodies are made hot, is not body, but a
sort of actuality of body. The soul of man is an independent substance.
Duns Scotus: (13th c. British philosopher.) The soul is a created
something, the basis of all finite existence, including corporeal
matter itself.
Albert Magnus: (13th c.) Held that the active intellect is a part of
the soul, and is immortal by virtue of its community with God.
Gassendi: (French philosopher, 17th c.) There is no evidence of the
spirituality of the soul.
Malebranche: (Priest and philosopher, 17th c.) We see all in God,
who is in fact our soul.
Locke: (17th c.) Matter may think, and God may communicate thought
to matter.
Paracelsus: (15th c.) Taught there were four souls--vegetal, sensitive,
rational, and spiritual. Campanella demonstrates this last by the
fact that carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer.
Mansel: ("Philosophy of Consciousness," p. 327.) We are not authorized
to say that we know the soul to be simple, and that, therefore, it is
indestructible; but only that we do not know the soul to be compound,
and, therefore, that we cannot infer its mortality from the analogy
of bodily dissolution.
"Buck's Theo. Dic." defines soul: That vital, immaterial, active
substance, or principle in man, whereby he perceives, remembers,
reasons, and wills. It is rather to be described as to its operations
than to be defined as to its essence. Various, indeed, have been the
opinions of philosophers concerning its substance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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