Chapter 105
The soul: its nature, parts and powers; the soul's relation to the body.
411 passages · 154 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
The idea of soul gathers questions that every other inquiry into human nature eventually reaches: what it is in us that lives, perceives, thinks and wills; how that principle stands to the body it animates; whether it is one or many, created or eternal, mortal or deathless; and what we owe it. In the Harvard Classics it runs through Plato’s last conversation and the Song Celestial, through Augustine’s confessions and Dante’s cosmos, through Descartes, Berkeley and Hume, and on to Emerson’s essays and the poets. William Penn puts the stake in a sentence: to know the soul’s faculties, its union with the body, its nature and its end would bring a man to adore God1. Few of these authors think such knowledge easy to win.
The first question is whether the soul can be known at all. Cicero answers that it is invisible yet known by its works, and that sleep, with its foresight, discloses its divine nature2. Antoninus, by George Long’s account, has never seen his own soul but honours it as he reveres unseen gods3. Taine turns the principle into a method for the historian, who must find beneath the visible man an invisible inward one made of faculties and sentiments4,5. The moderns add a second route, reflection. Descartes holds that the ideas of God and soul do not come from the senses, and that the mind seems hard to know only because men lean on imagination6. Berkeley’s Philonous calls the soul an indivisible, unextended thing that thinks and perceives, known immediately by reflection and not as an idea7,8,9. Rousseau knows he has a soul from his thought and feeling, though he cannot tell its essence10, and he finds its spirituality above all in the power of willing, which mechanics cannot explain11. Augustine is more troubled. He confesses that for a long time he could not conceive an incorporeal substance or know his own mind12, until he turned inward and saw, with the eye of the soul, an unchangeable light13.
Against these confidences stands a long skeptical tradition. The Koran answers questions about the spirit by saying it comes at the Lord’s bidding and that men know little of it14. Raleigh observes that Aristotle could define the soul only by what it does15. Pascal lists everything philosophers have failed to settle: the soul’s substance, seat, origin, duration and departure16,17. Voltaire surveys the Greeks, the Fathers, the schoolmen and Descartes and finds that none of them knew anything18,19. He praises Locke for doubting that the soul always thinks and for allowing that we cannot tell whether matter might think20,21. From this he draws a conclusion of his own: the soul’s substance matters little to religion, which requires only virtue, just as one may use a clock whose spring one has never seen22. Hobbes goes further and traces belief in invisible agents to men’s picture of the soul as made of the same thin stuff as dreams and apparitions23. Marcus Aurelius records without objection the opinion that the soul is an exhalation from the blood24.
The relation of soul to body divides the authors most sharply. In the Phaedo the soul resembles the divine, unseen and unchanging, while the body resembles the mortal, so the soul should rule and the body serve25. At death the soul exists by itself, and Socrates insists that he, his true self, is the soul26,27. The Gita likewise speaks of an imperishable spirit that dwells unstained in every body, as ether or sunlight takes no stain, while nature does all the working28,29. Descartes finds a self that would remain all it is even if the body did not exist30. Pascal calls us a compound of two opposite natures and argues that our rational part must be spiritual31,32, though he grants that the soul’s immateriality is not evident33. Rousseau reaches a distinct soul from the contradictions he finds within man34,35 and calls the union of the two substances a state of violence36.
The more firmly the two are distinguished, the harder their union is to understand. Pascal finds it incomprehensible that soul is joined to body, and equally incomprehensible that we should have no soul37,38. Hume calls the union the most mysterious principle in nature and notes that some refer it directly to God’s will39,40. Berkeley reports the Malebranchians’ view that an immaterial soul cannot unite with matter and therefore perceives things through its union with God41. Rousseau confesses that how the will moves the body is as dark to him as how sensation reaches the soul42.
An older line of thought escapes the puzzle by making the soul the body’s life. For Plato the soul is that whose presence makes a body alive43. Augustine calls the soul the life of bodies and God the life of souls44,45. Dante’s Virgil speaks of the soul as a substantial form joined to matter, which shows itself only in its working, as life shows in the green of a leaf46. Marcus calls the hidden cause that moves the body the rational soul and treats the body’s parts as its tools47. Emerson pushes the idea furthest: the soul makes the body, and the universe itself is the soul made outward48.
Yet the image that recurs most often is the prison. In the Phaedo the soul sees existence through bars and is enthralled by its own desires49; it reaches truth only when gathered into herself, apart from the body50,51. Epictetus speaks of a poor soul laden with a lifeless body52,53, and Marcus of a little soul bearing a corpse54. Paul would rather be absent from the body and present with the Lord55. Webster pictures the soul as a lark in a cage56, and Milton’s Samson calls himself the dungeon of himself57. Pascal holds that since the fall soul and body have been enemies, whose quarrel only death ends58. A counter-current runs alongside. Marcus notes that what touches the body touches the soul59. Pascal admires a physician who reconciled the soul’s immateriality with matter’s power to derange its functions60. Browning asks soul and flesh to help each other61, Whitman affirms that spirit and body act on each other62, and Stevenson denies that the soul is locked in a dungeon at all63. Carlyle goes so far as to treat the dualism itself as a symptom of disease64.
The Phaedo also contains the most searching naturalistic challenge in these books. Simmias suggests that the soul may be a harmony of the bodily elements, like the music of a lyre, and so perish with the instrument65. Echecrates admits the doctrine had attracted him personally66. Socrates answers in several steps. A harmony comes after its elements, which contradicts the soul’s preexistence67. A harmony admits degrees, while one soul is no more a soul than another68. A harmony could have no vice69. Above all, the soul leads and coerces the elements of the body instead of following them70.
On the soul’s powers, Marcus distributes sensation to the body, appetite to the soul and principles to intelligence, and notes that animals share the lower powers71,72. Milton’s Raphael describes a scale running from plant to vital, animal and intellectual spirits, with reason discursive in man and intuitive in angels73; Penn seats the rational soul in the animal as the animal is seated in the body74. Whether the soul is one or many is disputed. Augustine refutes the Manichees, who explained his warring wills by two souls; conflicting wills, he argues, belong to a single soul75,76. Dante argues from the way intense attention gathers the whole soul into one power77, and Browne finds in the soul a kind of trinity of faculties united in one substance78. Pascal notes that sudden changes of mood led some to posit two souls79, and Goethe’s Faust feels two souls struggling in his breast80. The Stoics put the matter in terms of rule. The governing part must not be a puppet on strings81; it should confine pleasure and pain to the body82 and shape itself toward its own end83. The Gita teaches that the self must be raised by the soul, which is a friend if it governs and a foe if it does not84. Rousseau names conscience the voice of the soul85, and Byron’s Manfred claims that the mind is its own origin of ill86.
Comparing men with beasts sharpened these distinctions. Ecclesiastes asks who knows whether man’s spirit goes upward and the beast’s downward87. Augustine observes that horse and mule share the soul’s power of animating a body, so God is not to be found by that power88. Dante derives the souls of brutes from elemental complexion but holds that human life is breathed in immediately by God89. Descartes insists that the brute soul is wholly different from ours90. More reports Utopians who think beasts’ souls immortal, though lesser91, and Carlyle allows animals a rude soul imprisoned in a dumb form92.
On the soul’s origin, Christian authors speak of creation. In Dante, God breathes a new spirit into the formed embryo93. Descartes holds that the rational soul cannot be derived from matter but must be expressly created94,95. Browne calls the soul’s making a second creation, while still weighing whether it is transmitted in the seed96. Pagan writers speak of kinship instead. Virgil’s Anchises teaches that one common soul animates the world97. Epictetus calls souls parts of God98, Marcus speaks of one intelligent soul that only seems divided99, and Long describes the Stoic soul as an efflux of the divinity100. Christian authors resist this. Augustine recalls the Manichaean error that the soul is offspring of God’s substance101, Pascal names the same error102, and Rousseau objects to equating the soul’s nature with God’s103. Preexistence is argued in the Phaedo from the soul’s knowledge before birth104,105. Wordsworth renews it in poetry, writing that the soul that rises with us has had its setting elsewhere106, and Vaughan longs for the spirit’s first state107. Beatrice, by contrast, refutes the view of the Timaeus that souls return to their stars108.
Emerson gathers kinship, power and revelation into the Over-Soul. The soul, he writes, is not an organ or faculty but the master of intellect and will109. It reveals truth by becoming the man it enlightens110,111 and advances by ascents of state rather than by addition112. Whoever has more soul has more power113, and against dead forms he prescribes “Soul, and second, Soul”114. Channing measures true elevation by the soul’s higher powers rather than by outward rank115,116. Wordsworth traces imagination to the soul’s consciousness of its own mighty powers117, and Coleridge holds that the light which enlivens the world must issue from the soul itself118.
What becomes of the soul at death is argued as fiercely as anything here. Plato’s arguments rest on its kinship with what is uncompounded and unchanging119,120,121. Krishna teaches that the spirit is birthless and deathless and puts off the flesh like worn-out robes122,123. Cicero calls the soul self-moving and uncompounded124. Browne finds no bodily organ for the rational soul125, and Berkeley’s speakers hold that immaterialism proves its incorruptibility126. Doubt is voiced as early as the Phaedo, where men fear the soul vanishes like smoke127 or wears out many bodies and finally perishes128. Marcus holds himself ready for extinction, dispersal or continuance alike129. Dante lays Epicurus in a burning tomb130, and Luther charges Aristotle with teaching that the soul dies with the body131. Marlowe’s Faustus wishes his soul might dissolve into drops of water132. Pascal finds nothing sadder than holding the soul to be wind and smoke133. Transmigration appears in Herodotus’s Egypt134, in the Phaedo’s souls saturated with body135 and in the Gita’s rebirths ordered by the dominant quality136. Marcus pictures the soul received back into the universal intelligence137. The Buddhist writings answer differently from all of these. Nagasena declares that there is no Ego, only a name for the aggregates138,139. The texts reject both persistence and annihilation140 and avoid both the identity and the distinctness of soul and body as extremes141. Pascal, from the other side of the world, asks a similar question: where is the self, if it lies neither in body nor in soul142?
On the care of the soul, however, almost all agree. Socrates tells Athens to care first for the soul’s improvement143, and Epictetus calls it our most precious possession144,145. Penn and Shakespeare rebuke men who pamper the body and starve the soul146,147. Purification is understood in two ways. For Plato it is the soul’s separation from the body148,149. For Marcus and Luther it is an inner freedom that outward things cannot touch150,151. Montaigne calls contemplation an apprenticeship to death152, and Henley’s speaker names himself captain of his soul153. The religious writers add longing. The psalmist’s soul pants after God154, Augustine carries a shattered soul he cannot set down155, Kempis describes spirit striving upward while flesh drags it down156, and Pascal’s soul, touched by God, seeks a happiness as lasting as itself157.
The poets keep these questions alive in images. Dante’s violent souls sprout into trees158. Donne’s lovers are the two feet of a compass159, and Marvell’s soul glides into the boughs like a bird160. Holmes bids the soul build ever more stately mansions161, and Andersen’s sea-maid asks why she alone has no soul162. Between Socrates’ confidence, Voltaire’s indifference and Nagasena’s denial, the questions of what the soul is, how it stands to the body and whether it lasts remain open in these books.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
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