SPIRITUALS
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SPIRITUALS
Dualistic Spiritualism, were, in succession to the
Scottish School, Hamilton and Martineau; and of
CathoUc writers, Brownson in America, and W. G.
Ward in England.
Evidence for the Doctrine of Spiritualism. — Whilst modern Idealists and writers advocating an extreme form of Spiritualism have frequently fallen into grievous error in their owti positive systems, their criticisms of Materialism and their vindication of the realit}' of spiritual being seem to contain much sound argument and some valuable contributions, as was indeed to be expected, to this controversy. (1) E pistemological Proof. — The line of reasoning adopted by Berkeley against Materialism has never met with any real answer from the latter. If we were compelled to choose between the two, the most ex- treme Idealistic Spiritualism would be incomparably the more logical creed to hold. Mind is more in- timately known than matter, ideas are more ulti- mate than molecules. External bodies are only known in terms of consciousness. To put forward as a final exjilanation that thought is merely a motion or property of certain bodies, when all bodies are, in the last resort, only revealed to us in terms of our flunking activity, is justly stigmatized by aU classes of Spirituahsts as utterly irrational. When the Ma- teriaUst or Sensationist reasons out his doctrine, he is landed in hopeless absurdity. Materialism is in fact the answer of the men who do not think, who are ap- jiarently quite unaware of the presuppositions which underlie all science. (2) Tcleological Proof. — The contention, old as Anaxagoras, that the order, adaptation, and design evidently revealed in the uni- verse postulate a principle distinct from matter for its explanation is also a vaUd argument for Spiritual- ism. Matter cannot arrange itself. Yet that there is arrangement in the universe, and that this pos- tulates the agency of a principle other than matter, is continually more and more forced upon us by the utter failure of natural selection to meet the demands made on it during the last half of the past century to accomplish by the blind, fortuitous a,ction of phys- ical agents work demanding the highest intelli- gence. (3) Ethical Proof. — The denial of spiritual beings distmct from, and in some sense independent of, matter inexorably involves the annihilation of morality. If the mechanical or materialistic theory of the universe be true, every movement and change' of each particle of matter is the inevitable outcome of previous physical conditions. There is no room anywhere for effective human choice or purpose in the world. Consequently, all those notions which form the constituent elements of man's moral creed — duty, obhgation, responsibihty, merit, desert, and the rest — are illusions of the imagination. Virtue and vice, fraud and benevolence are alike the inevitable outcome of the individual's circumstances, and ul- timately as truly beyond his control as the move- ment of the piston is in regard to the steam-engine. (4) Inefficacy and Uselessness of Mind in the Ma- terialist View. — Again, unless the reality of spirit distinct from, and independent of, matter be admitted, the still more incredible conclusion inexorably follows tliat mind, thought, consciousness play no really operative part in the world's history. If mind is not a real distinct energy, capable of interfering with, guiding, and influencing the movements of matter, then clearly it has played no real part in the crea- tions of art, literature, or science. Consciousness is merely an inefficacious by-prodiict, an epiphenom- cnon which has never modified in any degree the movements of matter concerned in the history of the human race. (.')) Psychological Proof. — The outcome of all the main theses of psychology, empirical and rational, in Catholic .systems of philosophy is the establishment of a Spiritualistic Dualism, and the (letcrmination of the relations of soul and body.
Analysis of the higher activities of the soul, and es-
pecially of the operations of intellectual conception,
judgment, reasoning, and self-conscious reflexion,
proves the faculty of intellect and the soul to which it
belongs to be of a spiritual nature, distinct from
matter, and not the outcome of a power inlierent in a
bodily organ. At the same time the Scholastic
doctrine, better than any other system, furnishes a
conception of the union of soul and body which ac-
counts for the extrinsic dependence of the spiritual
operations of the mind on the organism; whilst
maintaining the spiritual nature of the soul, it safe-
guards the union of soul and body in a single person.
Wahd, Naturalism and A{;nosticism (London and New York, 1899); Ladd, Philosophy of Mind ((New York. 1895); Balfour, Foundations of Belief ihondon. 1895); Castelein, Materialisme et SpiHtualisme (Brussels, 1895) ; Romanes, Fallacy of Material- ism in Nineteenth Cent. (1882), xii; Balmes, Fundamental Phi- losophy (tr.. New York, 1896); Lotze, Microcosmus, tr. Jones (Edinburgh, 1S85) ; Ferrier, Lectures and Phil. Remains (Edin- burgh and London, 1866); Klimke, Der Monismus (Freiburg, 1911); Herbert, Modern Realism Examined (London and New York, 18S6); Willmaxn, Geschichte des Jdealismus (Brunswick, 1894).
Michael Maher. Joseph Boll.and.
Spirituals, a general term denoting several groups of Friars Minor, existing in the second half of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth cen- turies, who, in opposition to the main body of the order, pretended to observe the Rule of St. Francis in its primitive severity. The derivation of the name is not quite clear. Homo spiritualis in the Middle Ages signified a profoundly religious and ascetic man, almost in the same sense as it occurs in I Cor., ii, 15; Gal., vi, 1. In this sense the word is commonly used in the thirteenth century. See examples in "Archiv" of Ehrle-Denifle, III, 600. In its limited application to the Friars Minor, according to some it owes its origin to the Rule of St. Francis, where it is said: "Wheresoever there are brothers who see and know that they are not able to observe the rule spirit- ually they ought to, and can recur to their ministers". Quite recently. Father Balthasar, O.F.M., traces it with some probability to the terminology of Joach- imism. Joachim in fact styles the "EvangeUura a;ter- num" as the spiritual Gospel, whose understanding is given through the spiritual intellect of spiritual men who are to preach it (Archiv, I, .53-.55). To the present writer it would seem that the name was given by the people, with whom the Spirituals, on account of their austerity, were generally in favour. In fact in a document of 1316 quoted by Ehrle, "Archiv", III, 601, the Spirituals themselves deny that they have ever sought the name of Spirituals, and declare that they want no other name than that of Friars Minor imposed by St. Francis. Moreover, we have also a direct testimony, hitherto overlooked, in the "Vita prima" of Clement V, in which it is recorded that "some called them [the Spirituals] Sarabaites and excommunicated, but by the people they are caUed Spirituals" (Baluzius, "Vit. Pap. Aven.", Paris, 1693, I, 19). From tliis it is clear that the name Spirituals is taken in its general sense, when applied by the people to the above-mentioned groups of Friars Minor.
The origin of the Spirituals is not less a subject for controversy than their name. If we are to believe Angelo Clareno's "Clironicle of the seven tribula- tions" the spiritual tendency in opposition to the larger observance of the community is as old ;is the order itself. Before modern historians began the history of the Spirituals (1271). .\ngelo had idready told of four persecutions of friars, muler Eli:is, even in the very lifetime of St. Francis himself, an<l that of Bl. John of Parma under Crcsceiilius in the lifetime of St. Bonaventure. It nnist be admitted that the spiritual tendency existed shortly after the death of St. Francis (1226). Nevertheless, it cannot
