The Seat of the Soul

THE SEAT OF THE SOUL PERCIVAL BAILEY, Ph.D., M.D.* In the midst ofthe word he was trying to say, In the midst ofhis laughter and glee, He had softly and suddenly vanished away— For the Snark was a Boojum, you see. Lewis Carroll In the beginning ofany discussion it is wise to define one's terms. We know, I suppose, what we mean by a "seat," but so many meanings have been given for the term "soul" as to lead some people to doubt its existence . Is there such a thing? We should not like to set out on a hunt for a snark, only to find, after all our trouble, that we had been searching for a boojum. Since I have never seen a soul and cannot pose as a specialist in the matter, I shall have to depend upon authoritative statements and shall choose only the most impeccable ones. Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Divini Redemptoris, states: "Eidem siquidem spiritualis atque immortalis animus inest" ("Man has a spiritual and immortal soul"). Since this is one of the fundamental axioms of our Western civilization, we may set out confidently on our quest. But what is a soul? St. Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on Aristotle 's "Treatise on the Soul," says (?): By "soul" we understand that by which a living thing is alive. . . . We must not think ofthe soul and body as though the body had its own form, making it a body, to which a soul is superadded, making it a living body; but rather that the body gets both its being and its Ufe from the soul. ... By the powers of the soul we mean the vegetative, the sensitive, the intellectual. . . . Now why did St. Thomas add this remark about the powers of the soul? Because, he says, "it is usual to distinguish three kinds ofsoul: vege- * Illinois State Psychopathic Institute, Chicago, Illinois. 417 tative, sensitive, intellectual." He followed Aristotle in maintaining that there is a unitary life-principle. Since any attempt to analyze this principle threatened the faith in personal immortality and gave rise to fierce controversies in the church—such as the Averroist controversy between St. Thomas and Siger ofBrabant, which wrecked both men (2)—the problem ofthe soul was subsequently avoided. As L. F. Ward puts it in his Psychic Factors ofCivilisation (3): But the philosophers who were capable of doing this [analyzing the thinking and knowing faculty] studiously avoided turning their attention to the soul, doubtless from a vague apprehension that, should they do so, it might prove capable ofanalysis, whereby its ontological oneness would be destroyed and the supposed foundations ofreligion and hopes for the future would be put injeopardy. So the guardians of orthodoxy zealously watched for threats which continued to come by indirection. One ofthese concerned the seat ofthe soul. What is the relationship of the soul and the body, and why is this problem important? St. Augustine tells us in his discussion On the Immortality ofthe Soul (4): Therefore, since the body, as has been said, subsists through the soul, the soul can in no way be changed into body; for no body is made except by receiving its form from the soul. The soul, if it become body, would become body through losing form, not through receiving it; therefore, it is not possible, unless perhaps the soul be contained in a place andjoined locally to the body. Ay, there's the rub! St. Augustine goes on to conclude: The soul is present as a whole not only in the entire mass ofthe body, but also in every least part ofthe body at the same time. This conclusion has not been acceptable to many thinkers. The great German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote: "I would demand, therefore, a rigorous proofofthe absurd scholastic dictum 'my soul is entire in my entire body and wholly in each of its parts.' " So speculation continued concerning the seat ofthe soul. Perhaps the most famous ofthe solutions ofthe problem was arrived at by the French philosopher René Descartes. In his Passions de l'âme he wrote (5): "There is a little gland in the brain in which the soul exercises its functions...