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croachment 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 doc-
trine 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 im-
mortality of every human soul. The doctrine of
consemaiion, as the necessary complement of crea-
tion, was not yet elaborated. Even in Scholastic
philosophy, which asserts natural immortality, the
abstract possibiUty of annihilation through an act
of God's absolute power is also admitted. Similarly,
Tatian denies the siinphcity of the soul, claiming
that absolute simplicit\- 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 dis-
tinguish between corporeity in strict essence and
corporeity as a necessary or natural concomitant.
Thus the soul may it.self be incorporeal and yet
require a body as a condition of its existence. In
this sen.se St. Irenjeus attributes a certain "cor-
poreal 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 inter-
pretation 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 cer- tain small aristocracy of souls. Gnosticism set aside the doctrine of Creation and the whole Christian idea of tiod'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 car- dinal doctrines like the Resurrection of the Body and even of the Incarnation itself in any proper sense. The orthodox teacher had to emphasize: (1) the soul's distinction from God and subjection to Him; (2) its affinities with matter. The two converse truths, viz. those of the soul's aflnnity 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. In- deed, similar errors have accompanied almost every sub.sequent form of heterodox Illuminism and Mys- ticism.
TertuUian's treatise "De Anima" has been called the first Christian cla.ssic on psychology proper. The author aims to show the failure of all philoso- phies to elucidate the nature of the sf)ul, and argues eloquently that Christ alone can teach mankind the truth on such subjcects. His own doctrine, however, is simply the refined Materiali.sm of the Stoics, sup- ported by arguments from medicine and jihysiology and by ingenious interpretations of Scripture, in which the unavoi<lable materialism of language is made to establish a metaphysical Materialism. Ter- tuUian is the founder of the theory of Traducianism, which derives the rational soul ex Irnduce, i. e. by procreation from the soul of the parent. For Ter- tullian this was a necessary consequence of Mate- rialism. Later writers found in the doctrine a con- venient 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
(cf. Traddci.inism). Origen taught the pre-exist-
ence of the soul. Terrestrial life is a punishment and
a remedy for pre-natal sin. "Soul" is properly
degraded spirit: flesh is a condition of ahenation and
bondage (cf. Comment, ad Rom., i, 18). Spirit,
however, finite spirit, can exist only in a body, albeit
of a glorious and ethereal nature.
Neo-Platonism, which through St. Augustine con- tributed 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 hes 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 undi\'ided and universal presence per- vading the organism {tola in Mo el iota 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 devel- opment of importance that he did not forestall. He is the founder of the introspective method. Nov- eriin 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: (1) 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. (2) .■^s against the Manicha;ans 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. (3) The origin of the soul is perhaps beyond our ken. He never definitely decided between Traducianism and Cre- ationism. (5) As regards spirituality, he is every- where most explicit, but it is interesting as an indi- cation 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 diff'erent senses. "Corpus, non caro" is his own description of the angelic body.
Medieval psychology prior to the .4ristotelean revival was affected by neo-Platonism, Augustinian- ism, and mystical influences derived from the works of pseudo-Dionysius. This fusion produced some- times, notably in Scotus Eriugena, a pantheistic theory of the soul. .\11 individual existence is but the development of the Divine life, in which all things are destined to be resumetl. The Arabian commentators, .\verroes and Avicenna, had inter- preted .\rist()tle's psychology in a pantheistic sen.se. St. Thoma.s, with the rest of the Schoolmen, amends this portion of the Aristotelean tradition, .accepting the rest with no important modifications. St. Thom.'is's do<'trine is briefly as follows: (1) 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; (2)
