The Catholic Church Reacts

LONDON - 11 October 2006 Vatican astronomer asks:

Could you baptise Superman?

A pocket-sized book published by CTS this week addresses Catholic attitudes to the Survivors and the idea of powers beyond laws of nature.

With increasing numbers evidence of "the Godlike" having powers beyond normal science, it is not surprising that the Catholic Church is beginning to explore what effect the discovery of these unique individuals might have on Christian theology.

In: Godlike in the Universe? Catholic belief and the search for the meanings behind the individuals godlike in ability, author Guy Consolmagno SJ, asks:

• Would humans recognise godlike ability if we saw it?
• Could we understand it? Should we even try?
• Is Original Sin something that affects all intelligent beings?
• Is Jesus Christ's redemption valid for all intelligent beings throughout the universe?
• or could other beings have natural abilities that compare to Jesus and other desciples?

Guy Consolmagno SJ, a Jesuit religious brother and astronomer, divides his year between the Vatican's observatory in Arizona and its older observatory at the Pope's summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, in the hills outside of Rome.

Brother Guy has advanced degrees in planetary science from MIT and the University of Arizona. He spends his time observing comets and asteroids, and does experiments with the Vatican's vast collection of meteorites ­ one of the largest in the world. He is one of a dozen Jesuit astronomers doing this work. The order been engaged in astronomy since before Galileo.

Could you baptise Superman? by Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ is published by: Catholic Truth Society ISBN 1-86082-343-2

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Soul

Catholic Encyclopedia (Greek psyche; Latin anima; French ame; German Seele).

The question of the reality of the soul and its distinction from the body is among the most important problems of philosophy, for with it is bound up the doctrine of a future life. Various theories as to the nature of the soul have claimed to be reconcilable with the tenet of immortality, but it is a sure instinct that leads us to suspect every attack on the substantiality or spirituality of the soul as an assault on the belief in existence after death. The soul may be defined as the ultimate internal principle by which we think, feel, and will, and by which our bodies are animated. The term "mind" usually denotes this principle as the subject of our conscious states, while "soul" denotes the source of our vegetative activities as well. That our vital activities proceed from a principle capable of subsisting in itself, is the thesis of the substantiality of the soul: that this principle is not itself composite, extended, corporeal, or essentially and intrinsically dependent on the body, is the doctrine of spirituality. If there be a life after death, clearly the agent or subject of our vital activities must be capable of an existence separate from the body. The belief in an animating principle in some sense distinct from the body is an almost inevitable inference from the observed facts of life. Even uncivilized peoples arrive at the concept of the soul almost without reflection, certainly without any severe mental effort. The mysteries of birth and death, the lapse of conscious life during sleep and in swooning, even the commonest operations of imagination and memory, which abstract a man from his bodily presence even while awake-all such facts invincibly suggest the existence of something besides the visible organism, internal to it, but to a large extent independent of it, and leading a life of its own. In the rude psychology of the primitive nations, the soul is often represented as actually migrating to and fro during dreams and trances, and after death haunting the neighbourhood of its body. Nearly always it is figured as something extremely volatile, a perfume or a breath. Often, as among the Fijians, it is represented as a miniature replica of the body, so small as to be invisible. The Samoans have a name for the soul which means "that which comes and goes". Many peoples, such as the Dyaks and Sumatrans, bind various parts of the body with cords during sickness to prevent the escape of the soul. In short, all the evidence goes to show that Dualism, however uncritical and inconsistent, is the instinctive creed of "primitive man" (see ANIMISM).

THE SOUL IN ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY

Early literature bears the same stamp of Dualism. In the "Rig-Veda" and other liturgical books of India, we find frequent references to the coming and going of manas (mind or soul). Indian philosophy, whether Brahminic or Buddhistic, with its various systems of metempsychosis, accentuated the distinction of soul and body, making the bodily life a mere transitory episode in the existence of the soul. They all taught the doctrine of limited immortality, ending either with the periodic world-destruction (Brahminism) or with attainment of Nirvana (Buddhism). The doctrine of a world-soul in a highly abstract form is met with as early as the eighth century before Christ, when we find it described as "the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unknown knower, the Eternal in which space is woven and which is woven in it."

In Greece, on the other hand, the first essays of philosophy took a positive and somewhat materialistic direction, inherited from the pre-philosophic age, from Homer and the early Greek religion. In Homer, while the distinction of soul and body is recognized, the soul is hardly conceived as possessing a substantial existence of its own. Severed from the body, it is a mere shadow, incapable of energetic life. The philosophers did something to correct such views. The earliest school was that of the Hylozoists; these conceived the soul as a kind of cosmic force, and attributed animation to the whole of nature. Any natural force might be designated psyche: thus Thales uses this term for the attractive force of the magnet, and similar language is quoted even from Anaxagoras and Democritus. With this we may compare the "mind-stuff" theory and Pan-psychism of certain modern scientists. Other philosophers again described the soul's nature in terms of substance. Anaximander gives it an aeriform constitution, Heraclitus describes it as a fire. The fundamental thought is the same. The cosmic ether or fire is the subtlest of the elements, the nourishing flame which imparts heat, life, sense, and intelligence to all things in their several degrees and kinds. The Pythagoreans taught that the soul is a harmony, its essence consisting in those perfect mathematical ratios which are the law of the universe and the music of the heavenly spheres. With this doctrine was combined, according to Cicero, the belief in a universal world-spirit, from which all particular souls are derived.

All these early theories were cosmological rather than psychological in character. Theology, physics, and mental science were not as yet distinguished. It is only with the rise of dialectic and the growing recognition of the problem of knowledge that a genuinely psychological theory became possible. In Plato the two standpoints, the cosmological and the epistemological, are found combined. Thus in the "Timaeus" (p. 30) we find an account derived from Pythagorean sources of the origin of the soul. First the world-soul is created according to the laws of mathematical symmetry and musical concord. It is composed of two elements, one an element of "sameness" (tauton), corresponding to the universal and intelligible order of truth, and the other an element of distinction or "otherness" (thateron), corresponding to the world of sensible and particular existences. The individual human soul is constructed on the same plan. Sometimes, as in the "Phaedrus", Plato teaches the doctrine of plurality of souls (cf. the well-known allegory of the charioteer and the two steeds in that dialogue). The rational soul was located in the head, the passionate or spirited soul in the breast, the appetitive soul in the abdomen. In the "Republic", instead of the triple soul, we find the doctrine of three elements within the complex unity of the single soul. The question of immortality was a principal subject of Plato's speculations. His account of the origin of the soul in the "Timaeus" leads him to deny the intrinsic immortality even of the world-soul, and to admit only an immortality conditional on the good pleasure of God. In the "Phaedo" the chief argument for the immortality of the soul is based on the nature of intellectual knowledge interpreted on the theory of reminiscence; this of course implies the pre-existence of the soul, and perhaps in strict logic its eternal pre-existence. There is also an argument from the soul's necessary participation in the idea of life, which, it is argued, makes the idea of its extinction impossible. These various lines of argument are nowhere harmonized in Plato (see IMMORTALITY). The Platonic doctrine tended to an extreme Transcendentalism. Soul and body are distinct orders of reality, and bodily existence involves a kind of violence to the higher part of our composite nature. The body is the "prison", the "tomb", or even, as some later Platonists expressed it, the "hell" of the soul. In Aristotle this error is avoided. His definition of the soul as "the first entelechy of a physical organized body potentially possessing life" emphasizes the closeness of the union of soul and body. The difficulty in his theory is to determine what degree of distinctness or separateness from the matter of the body is to be conceded to the human soul. He fully recognizes the spiritual element in thought and describes the "active intellect" (nous poetikos) as "separate and impassible", but the precise relation of this active intellect to the individual mind is a hopelessly obscure question in Aristotle's psychology. (See INTELLECT; MIND.)

The Stoics taught that all existence is material, and described the soul as a breath pervading the body. They also called it Divine, a particle of God (apospasma tou theu) -- it was composed of the most refined and ethereal matter. Eight distinct parts of the soul were recognized by them:

• the ruling reason (to hegemonikon)
• the five senses;
• the procreative powers.

Absolute immortality they denied; relative immortality, terminating with the universal conflagration and destruction of all things, some of them (e. g. Cleanthes and Chrysippus) admitted in the case of the wise man; others, such as Panaetius and Posidonius, denied even this, arguing that, as the soul began with the body, so it must end with it.

Epicureanism accepted the Atomist theory of Leucippus and Democritus. Soul consists of the finest grained atoms in the universe, finer even than those of wind and heat which they resemble: hence the exquisite fluency of the soul's movements in thought and sensation. The soul-atoms themselves, however, could not exercise their functions if they were not kept together by the body. It is this which gives shape and consistency to the group. If this is destroyed, the atoms escape and life is dissolved; if it is injured, part of the soul is lost, but enough may be left to maintain life. The Lucretian version of Epicureanism distinguishes between animus and anima: the latter only is soul in the biological sense, the former is the higher, directing principle (to hegemonikon) in the Stoic terminology, whose seat is the heart, the centre of the cognitive and emotional life.

THE SOUL IN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

Graeco-Roman philosophy made no further progress in the doctrine of the soul in the age immediately preceding the Christian era. None of the existing theories had found general acceptance, and in the literature of the period an eclectic spirit nearly akin to Scepticism predominated. Of the strife and fusion of systems at this time the works of Cicero are the best example. On the question of the soul he is by turns Platonic and Pythagorean, while he confesses that the Stoic and Epicurean systems have each an attraction for him. Such was the state of the question in the West at the dawn of Christianity. In Jewish circles a like uncertainty prevailed. The Sadducees were Materialists, denying immortality and all spiritual existence. The Pharisees maintained these doctrines, adding belief in pre-existence and transmigration. The psychology of the Rabbins is founded on the Sacred Books, particularly the account of the creation of man in Genesis. Three terms are used for the soul: nephesh, nuah, and neshamah; the first was taken to refer to the animal and vegetative nature, the second to the ethical principle, the third to the purely spiritual intelligence. At all events, it is evident that the Old Testament throughout either asserts or implies the distinct reality of the soul. An important contribution to later Jewish thought was the infusion of Platonism into it by Philo of Alexandria. He taught the immediately Divine origin of the soul, its pre-existence and transmigration; he contrasts the pneuma, or spiritual essence, with the soul proper, the source of vital phenomena, whose seat is the blood; finally he revived the old Platonic Dualism, attributing the origin of sin and evil to the union of spirit with matter.

It was Christianity that, after many centuries of struggle, applied the final criticisms to the various psychologies of antiquity, and brought their scattered elements of truth to full focus. The tendency of Christ's teaching was to centre all interest in the spiritual side of man's nature; the salvation or loss of the soul is the great issue of existence. The Gospel language is popular, not technical. Psyche and pneuma are used indifferently either for the principle of natural life or for spirit in the strict sense. Body and soul are recognized as a dualism and their values contrasted: "Fear ye not them that kill the body . . . but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell."

In St. Paul we find a more technical phraseology employed with great consistency. Psyche is now appropriated to the purely natural life; pneuma to the life of supernatural religion, the principle of which is the Holy Spirit, dwelling and operating in the heart. The opposition of flesh and spirit is accentuated afresh (Romans 1:18, etc.). This Pauline system, presented to a world already prepossessed in favour of a quasi-Platonic Dualism, occasioned one of the earliest widespread forms of error among Christian writers -- the doctrine of the Trichotomy. According to this, man, perfect man (teleios) consists of three parts: body, soul, spirit (soma, psyche, pneuma). Body and soul come by natural generation; spirit is given to the regenerate Christian alone. Thus, the "newness of life", of which St. Paul speaks, was conceived by some as a superadded entity, a kind of oversoul sublimating the "natural man" into a higher species. This doctrine was variously distorted in the different Gnostic systems. The Gnostics divided man into three classes:

• pneumatici or spiritual,
• psychici or animal,
• choici or earthy.

To each class they ascribed a different origin and destiny. The spiritual were of the seed of Achemoth, and were destined to return in time whence they had sprung -- namely, into the pleroma. Even in this life they are exempted from the possibility of a fall from their high calling; they therefore stand in no need of good works, and have nothing to fear from the contaminations of the world and the flesh. This class consists of course of the Gnostics themselves. The psychici are in a lower position: they have capacities for spiritual life which they must cultivate by good works. They stand in a middle place, and may either rise to the spiritual or sink to the hylic level. In this category stands the Christian Church at large. Lastly, the earthy souls are a mere material emanation, destined to perish: the matter of which they are composed being incapable of salvation (me gar einai ten hylen dektiken soterias). This class contains the multitudes of the merely natural man.

Two features claim attention in this the earliest essay towards a complete anthropology within the Christian Church:

• an extreme spirituality is attributed to "the perfect";
• immortality is conditional for the second class of souls, not an intrinsic attribute of all souls.

It is probable that originally the terms pneumatici, psychici, and choici denoted at first elements which were observed to exist in all souls, and that it was only by an afterthought that they were employed, according to the respective predominance of these elements in different cases, to represent supposed real classes of men. The doctrine of the four temperaments and the Stoic ideal of the Wise Man afford a parallel for the personification of abstract qualities. The true genius of Christianity, expressed by the Fathers of the early centuries, rejected Gnosticism. The ascription to a creature of an absolutely spiritual nature, and the claim to endless existence asserted as a strictly de jure privilege in the case of the "perfect", seemed to them an encroachment on the incommunicable attributes of God. The theory of Emanation too was seen to be a derogation from the dignity of the Divine nature For this reason, St. Justin, supposing that the doctrine of natural immortality logically implies eternal existence, rejects it, making this attribute (like Plato in the "Timaeus") dependent on the free will of God; at the same time he plainly asserts the de facto immortality of every human soul. The doctrine of conservation, as the necessary complement of creation, was not yet elaborated. Even in Scholastic philosophy, which asserts natural immortality, the abstract possibility of annihilation through an act of God's absolute power is also admitted. Similarly, Tatian denies the simplicity of the soul, claiming that absolute simplicity belongs to God alone. All other beings, he held, are composed of matter and spirit. Here again it would be rash to urge a charge of Materialism. Many of these writers failed to distinguish between corporeity in strict essence and corporeity as a necessary or natural concomitant. Thus the soul may itself be incorporeal and yet require a body as a condition of its existence. In this sense St. Irenaeus attributes a certain "corporeal character" to the soul; he represents it as possessing the form of its body, as water possesses the form of its containing vessel. At the same time, he teaches fairly explicitly the incorporeal nature of the soul. He also sometimes uses what seems to be the language of the Trichotomists, as when he says that in the Resurrection men shall have each their own body, soul, and spirit. But such an interpretation is impossible in view of his whole position in regard to the Gnostic controversy.

The dubious language of these writers can only be understood in relation to the system they were opposing. By assigning a literal divinity to a certain small aristocracy of souls, Gnosticism set aside the doctrine of Creation and the whole Christian idea of God's relation to man. On the other side, by its extreme dualism of matter and spirit, and its denial to matter (i.e. the flesh) of all capacity for spiritual influences, it involved the rejection of cardinal doctrines like the Resurrection of the Body and even of the Incarnation itself in any proper sense. The orthodox teacher had to emphasize:

• the soul's distinction from God and subjection to Him;
• its affinities with matter.

The two converse truths -- those of the soul's affinity with the Divine nature and its radical distinction from matter, were apt to be obscured in comparison. It was only afterwards and very gradually, with the development of the doctrine of grace, with the fuller recognition of the supernatural order as such, and the realization of the Person and Office of the Holy Spirit, that the various errors connected with the pneuma ceased to be a stumbling-block to Christian psychology. Indeed, similar errors have accompanied almost every subsequent form of heterodox Illuminism and Mysticism.

Tertullian's treatise "De Anima" has been called the first Christian classic on psychology proper. The author aims to show the failure of all philosophies to elucidate the nature of the soul, and argues eloquently that Christ alone can teach mankind the truth on such subjects. His own doctrine, however, is simply the refined Materialism of the Stoics, supported by arguments from medicine and physiology and by ingenious interpretations of Scripture, in which the unavoidable materialism of language is made to establish a metaphysical Materialism. Tertullian is the founder of the theory of Traducianism, which derives the rational soul ex traduce, i.e. by procreation from the soul of the parent. For Tertullian this was a necessary consequence of Materialism. Later writers found in the doctrine a convenient explanation of the transmission of original sin. St. Jerome says that in his day it was the common theory in the West. Theologians have long abandoned it, however, in favour of Creationism, as it seems to compromise the spirituality of the soul. Origen taught the pre-existence of the soul. Terrestrial life is a punishment and a remedy for prenatal sin. "Soul" is properly degraded spirit: flesh is a condition of alienation and bondage (cf. Comment. ad Romans 1:18). Spirit, however, finite spirit, can exist only in a body, albeit of a glorious and ethereal nature.

Neo-Platonism, which through St. Augustine contributed so much to spiritual philosophy, belongs to this period. Like Gnosticism, it uses emanations. The primeval and eternal One begets by emanation nous (intelligence); and from nous in turn springs psyche (soul), which is the image of nous, but distinct from it. Matter is a still later emanation. Soul has relations to both ends of the scale of reality, and its perfection lies in turning towards the Divine Unity from which it came. In everything, the neo-Platonist recognized the absolute primacy of the soul with respect to the body. Thus, the mind is always active, even in sense -- perception -- it is only the body that is passively affected by external stimuli. Similarly Plotinus prefers to say that the body is in the soul rather than vice versa: and he seems to have been the first to conceive the peculiar manner of the soul's location as an undivided and universal presence pervading the organism (tota in toto et tota in singulis partibus). It is impossible to give more than a very brief notice of the psychology of St. Augustine. His contributions to every branch of the science were immense; the senses, the emotions, imagination, memory, the will, and the intellect -- he explored them all, and there is scarcely any subsequent development of importance that he did not forestall. He is the founder of the introspective method. Noverim Te, noverim me was an intellectual no less than a devotional aspiration with him. The following are perhaps the chief points for our present purpose:

• he opposes body and soul on the ground of the irreducible distinction of thought and extension (cf. DESCARTES). St. Augustine, however, lays more stress on the volitional activities than did the French Idealists.
• As against the Manichaeans he always asserts the worth and dignity of the body. Like Aristotle he makes the soul the final cause of the body. As God is the Good or Summum Bonum of the soul, so is the soul the good of the body.
• The origin of the soul is perhaps beyond our ken. He never definitely decided between Traducianism and Creationism.
• As regards spirituality, he is everywhere most explicit, but it is interesting as an indication of the futile subtleties current at the time to find him warning a friend against the controversy on the corporeality of the soul, seeing that the term "corpus" was used in so many different senses. "Corpus, non caro" is his own description of the angelic body.

Medieval psychology prior to the Aristotelean revival was affected by neo-Platonism, Augustinianism, and mystical influences derived from the works of pseudo-Dionysius. This fusion produced sometimes, notably in Scotus Eriugena, a pantheistic theory of the soul. All individual existence is but the development of the Divine life, in which all things are destined to be resumed. The Arabian commentators, Averroes and Avicenna, had interpreted Aristotle's psychology in a pantheistic sense. St. Thomas, with the rest of the Schoolmen, amends this portion of the Aristotelean tradition, accepting the rest with no important modifications. St. Thomas's doctrine is briefly as follows:

• the rational soul, which is one with the sensitive and vegetative principle, is the form of the body. This was defined as of faith by the Council of Vienne of 1311;
• the soul is a substance, but an incomplete substance, i. e. it has a natural aptitude and exigency for existence in the body, in conjunction with which it makes up the substantial unity of human nature;
• though connaturally related to the body, it is itself absolutely simple, i.e. of an unextended and spiritual nature. It is not wholly immersed in matter, its higher operations being intrinsically independent of the organism;
• the rational soul is produced by special creation at the moment when the organism is sufficiently developed to receive it. In the first stage of embryonic development, the vital principle has merely vegetative powers; then a sensitive soul comes into being, educed from the evolving potencies of the organism -- later yet, this is replaced by the perfect rational soul, which is essentially immaterial and so postulates a special creative act. Many modern theologians have abandoned this last point of St. Thomas's teaching, and maintain that a fully rational soul is infused into the embryo at the first moment of its existence.

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Mind

Catholic Encyclopedia (Greek nous; Latin mens, German Geist, Seele; French ame esprit).

The word mind has been used in a variety of meanings in English, and we find a similar want of fixity in the connotation of the corresponding terms in other languages. Aristotle tells us that Anaxagoras, as compared with other early Greek philosophers, appeared like one sober among drunken men in that he introduced nous, mind, as efficient cause of the general order in the universe. In treating of the soul, Aristotle himself identifies nous with the intellectual faculty, which he conceives as partly active, partly passive (see INTELLECT). It is the thinking principle the highest and most spiritual energy of the soul, separable from the body, and immortal. The Latin word, mens, was employed in much the same sense. - St. Thomas, who represents the general scholastic usage, derives mens from metior (to measure). He identifies mens with the human soul viewed as intellectual and abstracting from lower organic faculties. Angels, or pure spirits, may thus be called minds (De Veritate, X, a. 1). For Descartes the human soul is simply mens, res cogitans, mind. It stands in complete opposition to the body and to matter in general. The vegetative faculties allotted to the soul by Aristotle and the Schoolmen are rejected by him, and those vital functions are explained by him mechanically. The lower animals do not possess minds in any sense; they are for him mere machines. An early usage in English connects the word mind closely with memory, as in the sentence "to bear in mind". Again it has been associated with the volitional side of our nature, as in the phrases "to mind" and "to have a mind to effect something". Still when restricted to a particular faculty the general tendency has been to identify mind with the cognitive and more especially with the intellectual powers. In this usage it more closely corresponds to the primary meaning of the Latin mens, understood as the thinking or judging principle. Mind is also conceived as a substantial being, equivalent to the scholastic mens, partly identified with, partly distinguished from the soul. If we define the soul as the principle within me, by which I feel, think, will, and by which my body is animated, we may provide a definition of mind of fairly wide acceptance by merely omitting the last clause. That is, in this usage mind designates the soul as the source of conscious life, feeling, thought, and volition, abstraction being made from the vegetative functions. On the other hand the term soul emphasizes the note of substantiality and the property of animating principle.

In the English psychological literature of the last century there has indeed been exhibited a most remarkable timidity in regard to the use of the term "soul". Whilst in German at all events the word seele has been in general acceptance among psychologists, the great majority of English writers on mental life completely shun the use of the corresponding English word, as seemingly perilous to their philosophical reputation. Even the most orthodox representatives of the Scotch school rigorously boycotted the word, so that "the nature and attributes of the Human Mind", came to be recognized as the proper designation of the subject matter of psychology, even amongst those who believed in the reality of an immaterial principle, as the source of man's conscious life. However, the spread of the positivist or phenomenalist view of the science of psychology has resulted in a very widely adopted identification of mind merely with the conscious states, ignoring any principle or subject to which these states belong. The mind in this sense is only the sum of the conscious processes or activities of the individual with their special modes of operating. This, however, is a quite inadequate conception of the mind. It may, of course, be convenient and quite legitimate for some purposes to investigate certain activities or operations of this mind or soul, without raising the ultimate question of the metaphysical nature of the principle or substance which is the basis and source of these phenomena; and it may also serve as a useful economy of language to employ the term mind, merely to designate mental life as a stream of consciousness. But the adoption of this phraseology must not cause us to lose sight of the fact that along with the action there is the agent, that underlying the forms of mental behaviour there is the being which behaves. The connection of our abiding personal identity, nay the simplest exercise of self-conscious memory, compels us to acknowledge the reality of a permanent principle, the subject and connecting bond of the transitory states. Mind adequately conceived must thus be held to include the subject or agent along with states or activities, and it should be the business of a complete science of mind to investigate both.

All our rational knowledge of the nature of the mind must be derived from the study of its operations. Consequently metaphysical or rational psychology logically follows empirical or phenomenal psychology. The careful observation, description, and analysis of the activities of the mind lead up to our philosophical conclusions as to the inner nature of the subject and the source of those activities. The chief propositions in regard to the human mind viewed as a substantial principle which Catholic philosophers claim to establish by the light of reason are, its abiding unity, its individuality, its freedom, its simplicity, and its spirituality (see CONSCIOUSNESS; INDIVIDUALITY; INTELLECT; SOUL).

MIND AND CONSCIOUSNESS

In connection with the investigation of our mental operations there arises the question, whether these are to be deemed coextensive with consciousness. Are there unconscious mental processes? The problem under different forms has occupied the attention of philosophers from Leibniz to J. S. Mill, whilst in recent years the phenomena of hypnotism, "multiple personality", and abnormal forms of mental life have brought the question of the relation between the unconscious and the conscious processes in the human organism into greater prominence. That all forms of mental life, perception thought, feeling, and volition are profoundly affected in character by nervous processes and by vital activities, which do not emerge into the strata of conscious life, seems to be indisputably established. Whether however, unconscious processes which affect conclusions of the intellect and resolutions of the will, but are in themselves quite unconscious, should be called mental states, or conceived as acts of the mind, has been keenly disputed. In favour of the doctrine of unconscious mental processes have been urged the fact that many of our ordinary sensations arise out of an aggregate of impressions individually too faint to be separately perceivable, the fact that attention may reveal to us experiences previously unnoticed, the fact that unobserved trains of thought may result in sudden reminiscences, and that in abnormal mental conditions hypnotized, somnambulistic, and hysterical patients often accomplish difficult intellectual feats whilst remaining utterly unaware of the rational intermediate steps leading up to the final results. On the other side it is urged that most of those phenomena can be accounted for by merely subconscious processes which escape attention and are forgotten; or, at all events, by unconscious cerebration, the working out of purely physical nervous processes without any concomitant mental state till the final cerebral situation is reached, when the corresponding mental act is evoked. The dispute is probably, at least in part, grounded on differences of definition. If, however, the mind be identified with the soul, and if the latter be allowed to be the principle of vegetative life, there can be no valid reason for denying that the principle of our mental life may be also the subject of unconscious activities. But if we confine the term mind to the soul, viewed as conscious, or as the subject of intellectual operations, then by definition we exclude unconscious states from the sphere of mind. Still whatever terminology we may find it convenient to adopt, the fact remains, that our most purely intelectual operations are profoundly influenced by changes which take place below the surface of consciousness. ORIGIN OF MENTAL LIFE

A related question is that of the simple or composite character of consciousness. Is mind, or conscious life, an amalgam or product of units which are not conscious? One response is offered in the "mind-stuff" or "mind-dust" theory. This is a necessary deduction from the extreme materialistic evolutionist hypothesis when it seeks to explain the origin of human minds in this universe. According to W. K. Clifford, who invented the term "mind-stuff", those who accept evolution must, for the sake of consistency, assume that there is attached to every particle of matter in the universe a bit of rudimentary feeling or intelligence, and "when the material molecules are so combined as to form the film on the under-side of a jelly fish, the elements of mind-stuff which go along with them are so combined as to form the faint beginnings of sentience. When the matter takes the complex form of the living human brain, the corresponding mind-stuff takes the form of human consciousness, having intelligence and volition" (Lectures and Essays, 284). Spencer and other thorough-going evolutionists are driven to a similar conclusion. But the true inference is rather, that the incredibility of the conclusion proves the untenableness of the materialistic form of evolution which these writers adopt. There is no evidence whatever of this universal mind-stuff which they postulate. It is of an inconceivable character. As Professor James says, to call it "nascent" consciousness is merely a verbal quibble which explains nothing. No multiplicity and no grouping or fusing of unconscious elements can be conceived as constituting an act of conscious intelligence. The unity and simplicity which characterize the simplest acts of the mind are incompatible with such a theory.

MIND AND MATTER

The opposition of mind and matter brings us face to face with the great controversy of Dualism and Monism. Are there two forms of being in the universe ultimately and radically distinct? or are they merely diverse phases or aspects of one common underlying substratum? Our experience at all events appears to reveal to us two fundamentally contrasted forms of reality. On the one side, there is facing us matter occupying space, subject to motion, possessed of inertia and resistance permanent indestructible, and seemingly independent of our observation. On the other, there is our own mind, immediately revealing itself to us in simple unextended acts of consciousness, which seem to be born and then annihilated. Through these conscious acts we apprehend the material world. All our knowledge of it is dependent on them, and in the last resort limited by them. By analogy we ascribe to other human organisms minds like our own. A craving to find unity in the seeming multiplicity of experience has led many thinkers to accept a monistic explanation, in which the apparent duality of mind and matter is reduced to a single underlying principle or substratum. Materialism considers matter itself, body material substance, as this principle. For the materialist, mind, feelings, thoughts, and volitions are but "functions" or "aspects" of matter; mental life is an epiphenomenon, a by-product in the working of the Universe, which can in no way interfere with the course of physical changes or modify the movement of any particle of matter in the world; indeed, in strict consistency it should be held that successive mental acts do not influence or condition each other, but that thoughts and volitions are mere incidental appendages of certain nerve processes in the brain; and these latter are determined exclusively and completely by antecedent material processes. In other words, the materialistic theory, when consistently thought out, leads invariably to the startling conclusion that the human mind has had no real influence on the history of the human race.

On the other hand, the idealistic monist denies altogether the existence of any extra-mental, independent material world. So far from mind being a mere aspect or epiphenomenon attached to matter, the material universe is a creation of the mind and entirely dependent on it. Its esse is percipi. It exists only in and for the mind. Our ideas are the only things of which we can be truly certain. And, indeed, if we were compelled to embrace monism, it seems to us there can be little doubt as to the logical superiority of the idealistic position. But there is no philosophical compulsion to adopt either a materialistic or an idealistic monism. The conviction of the common sense of mankind, and the assumption of physical science that there are two orders of being in the universe, mind and matter, distinct from each other yet interacting and influencing each other, and the assurance that the human mind can obtain a limited yet true knowledge of the material world which really exists outside and independently of it occupying a space of three dimensions, this view, which is the common teaching of the Scholastic philosophy and Catholic thinkers, can be abundantly justified (see DUALISM; ENERGY, CONSERVATION OF).

MIND AND MECHANISM

Mind is also contrasted with mechanical theories as cause or explanation of the order of the world. The affirmation of mind in this connection is equivalent to teleologism, or idealism in the sense of there being intelligence and purpose governing the working of the universe. This is the meaning of the word in Bacon's well-known statement: "I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend and the Alcoran than that this universal frame is without a mind" (Essays: Of Atheism). It is, in fact, the doctrine of theism. The world as given demands a rational account of its present character. The proximate explanations of much, especially in the inorganic and non-living portion of it, can be furnished by material energies acting according to known laws. But reason demands an account of all the contents of the universe-living and conscious beings as well as lifeless matter- and, moreover, it insists on carrying the inquiry back until it reaches an ultimate explanation. For this, Mind, an Intelligent Cause, is necessary. Even if the present universe could be traced back to a collection of material atoms, the particular collocation of these atoms from which the present cosmos resulted, would have to be accounted for- because in the mechanical or materialistic theory of evolution, that original collocation contained this universe and no other, and that particular collocation clamours for a sufficient reason just as inevitably as does the present complex result. If we are told that the explanation of a page of a newspaper is to be found in the contact of the paper with a plate of set types, we are still compelled to ask haw the prticular arrangement of the types came about, and we are certain that the sufficient explanation ultimately rests in the action of mind or intelligent being.

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The AMERICAN GODS