The Aristotelian argument for the spirituality of the human soul
consists in the application of a self-evident principle or axiom to
certain facts of internal experience. The axiom in question is the
following: “The nature of an agent is revealed by its action”; or,
to phrase it somewhat differently: “Every being operates after the
same manner that it exists.” The factual data, to which reference is
made, are man’s higher psychic functions, in which the soul alone
is the active cause and receptive subject, namely: the rational or
superorganic functions of thinking and willing. The argument may be
formulated thus: Every agent exists after the same manner that it
operates. But in rational cognition and volition the soul acts without
the co-agency of the material organism. Therefore the human soul can
exist without the coexistence of the material organism. But this is
tantamount to saying that it is a spiritual reality irreducible to
matter and incapable of derivation from matter. For we define that
as spiritual, which exists, or is, at least, capable of existing,
without matter. Consequently, the human soul is a supermaterial and
immortal principle, which does not need the body to maintain itself in
existence, and can, on that account, survive the death and dissolution
of its material complement, the organism. Such a reality, as we
have seen, cannot be a product of evolution, but can only come into
existence by way of creation.
The axiom, that activity is the expression or manifestation of the
entity which underlies it, needs but little elucidation. In the
genesis of human knowledge, the dynamic is prior to both the static
and the entitive. We deduce the nature of the cause from the changes
or effects that it produces. Action, in short, is the primary datum
upon which our knowledge of being rests. It is the spectrum of solar
light emitted by them, which enables us to determine the nature of
the chemical elements present in the distant Sun. It is the reaction
of an unknown compound with a test reagent that furnishes the chemist
with a clue to its composition and structure. It is the special type
of tissue degeneration caused by the specific toxin engendered by an
invisible disease germ that enables the pathologists to identify the
latter, etc., etc. So much for the axiom. Regarding the psychological
facts, a more lengthy exposition is required. To begin with, there
is _prima facie_ evidence against the contention that the higher
psychic functions in man are independent of the organism. Injury and
degeneration of the cerebral cortex result (very often, at least) in
insanity and idiocy. Reason, therefore, is in some way dependent upon
the organism. Babies, too, are incapable of rational thought until
such a time as the nervous system is fully developed. Obviously,
then, rational functions cannot be spiritual, inasmuch as they are not
independent of the organism.
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