IMMORTALITY
688
IMMORTALITY
writings, the "Meno", "Phacdrus", "Gorgias",
"TimfBUs", and "Republic", but especially in the
"Phsdo". There are many variations and seeming inconsistencies, with liberal use of myth and
allegory, in the unfolding of his ideas in these dif-
ferent works. For Plato, the soul is a being quite
distinct from the body, related to it as the pilot to the
ship, the charioteer to the chariot. The rational soul
is the proper soul of man. It is a Divine element, and
it is this which is immortal. Among his arguments
in favour of immortality are the following: (1)
Throughout the universe opposites alternately gener-
ate and succeed each other. Death follows life, and
out of death life is again generated. Man must be no
exception to this general law. (2) The soul is a simple
substance, akin in nature to the simple and immutable
idea, and therefore, like the latter, incorruptible. (3)
The essence of the soul is life and self-movement.
Being a soul only in so far as it participates in the idea
of life, it is incapable of death. (4) The process of
learning is really only reminiscence, the recall of
knowledge of a past life. Man is, therefore, to survive
the present life. (5) Truth dwells in us; the .soul is
made for truth, but truth is eternal. (6) The soul is
made for virtue, but advance in virtue consists in pro-
gressive liberation of oneself from bodily passions.
(7) The soul is not a harmony, but the lyre itself. (8)
Destruction can be effected only by a principle antag-
onistic to the very nature of a being. Vice is for the
soul the only principle of this kind, but vice cannot
destroy the being of the soul, therefore the soul is in-
destructible. Otherwise the wicked would have no
future punishment to expect. Finally, he urges, in
many forms, the argument from retributive justice
and the necessity of future existence for adequate re-
ward of the good and punishment of the wieketl. In
Aristotle's philosophical system, on the other hand,
the question of immortality holds so small a place that
it is doubtful whether he believed in a future personal
life at all. Pie teaches clearly that the voOs iroi7jTi/c6s.
the active intellect, is indestructible and eternal; but
then it is not certain that he did not understand this
voCs in a pantheistic sense. It is, however, in his
Ethics that Aristotle is most disappointing on this sub-
ject. For obviously, the question of the reality of a
future life is of the first importance in any complete
philosophical treatment of morality, whilst Aristotle
in this treatise practically ignores the problem. His
attitude here proves how much all modern ethical
philosophy owes to the Christian Revelation.
The Epicurean School offers us the most complete and reasoned negation of immortality among ancient philosophers. Indeed the most recent Materialism has little of force to add to Lucretius' elaborate expo- sition of the Epicurean arguments (De Natura Rerum, III). He is quite candid in stating that his object is to relieve men from fear of that life. The position of the Stoics is more uncertain. Their Pantheism presents difficulties to the doctrine of survival, yet at times they seem to favour the belief. But in Greece and Rome, as elsewhere, whatever may have been the teaclung of the philosophical schools, the mass of even pagan mankind clung to a faith and hope in a future existence, however degraded and incoherent their conception of its character.
Christianiti/. — With the birth of the Christian relig- ion the doctrine of immortality took up quite a new position in the world. It formed the foundation of the whole scheme of the Christian Faith. No longer a dubious philosophical tenet, or a hazy popular opin- ion, it is now revealed in clear and distinct terms. The dogma of the Fall, the Christian conception of sin, the Incarnation of the Son of God, all the means of grace and redemption, and the priceless value of each human soul are connected in significance with this article of the Creed. As part of the Christian Faith this doctrine was one of the chief factors in establish-
ing the equality of man and the liberation of the slave.
The doctrine received its complete philosophical elalj-
oration from St. Thomas. Accepting the Aristotclean
theory that the soul is the form of the body, .\quinas
still insists that, possessing spiritual faculties of intel-
lect and will, it belongs to an altogether higher plane
of existence than other animal forms. Though form
of the body, it is not to be conceived as immersed ac-
cording to its whole being in the body. That is, it is
not completely and intrinsically dependent on the
body which it animates, like/or;?!(F eductw ex materia.
For the human soul is created and infused into the
body, and there is thus no intrinsic impossibility in its
existing separate from the botly. Still, as the liuman
soul possesses vegetative and animal faculties, its
natural condition is that of imion with a body, and
during this life the activities of the spiritual powers of
intellect and will presuppose the co-operation of the
organic faculties of imagination and sensation. Even
the most spiritual operations of the soul are therefore
extrinsically dependent on the bodily organism. The
sensory and vegetative activities of the soul should
necessarily be suspended when the soul is separated
from the body, whilst its conscious spiritual life must
then be earned on in some manner other than the
present. What that manner is, our present experi-
ence does not enable us adcciuately to conceive. Yet
St. Thomas holds that we can prove the fact of the
soul's conscious life when separate from the body.
Modern thought has not added much to the philoso- phy of immortality. Decartes' conception of the soul would lend itself to some of the Platonic arguments. In Leibnitz's theory the soul is the chief monad in the human nature. It is a simjile, spiritual substance of a self-active nature. From this he infers its indestruc- tibility and immortality, but he also believes that its pre-existence is similarly de<lucible. Spinoza's Pan- theism is incompatible with the theory of personal immortality. In Kant's critical philosophy, substan- tiality is a mere sulijective category or form moulding our way of thinking. The conception of the soul as a substance is illusory, and every attempt to establish immortality by rational argument is a mere sophism. Yet, hke the existence of God, he reinstates it as a postulate of the practical reason. For Hume and Sensationists generally, to whom the mind is merely a series of mental states attached to certain cerebral changes, there can obviously be no metaphysical liasis for the doctrine of immortality, though J. Stuart Mill argues that his school need have no special difficulty in adhering to the belief in an endless series of such con- scious states.
Justification of the Doctrine of Immort.ality. — .4.S we have already observed, the immortality of the human soul is one of the most fundamental tenets of the Christian Religion. Consequently, every evidence for the Divine character of Christianity goes to prove and confirm the fovmdation upim which the whole edi- fice rests. Catholic philosophers, however, with the exception of Scotus and his followers, have generally claimed to establish the validity of the belief apart from revelation. Still its adequate treatment pre- supposes, as already demonstrated, some of the main theses of natural theology, ethics, and psychology. It is itself the crowning conclusion of this last branch of philosophy. Only the briefest outline of the argu- ment can be attempted here. For fuller discussion the reader may consult any Cathohc text-book of psychology. The following are the chief propositions involved in the building up of the doctrine: The human soul is a substance or substantial principle. It is a simple, or indivisible, and also a spiritual being, that is, intrinsically independent of matter. It is naturally incorruptible. It cannot be annihilated by any crea- ture. God is bound to preserve the soul in possession of its conscious life, at least for some time, after death. Finally, the evidence all leads to the conclusion that
